Meeting notes from 02-26-08

Tools needed:

A good scanner

For prints, almost any scanner will do pretty well, but if you are doing small photos, slides or negatives, you will probably want to go with a nicer Epson scanner such as the  Epson Perfection 4490. These scanners offer transparancy scanning for slides and negatives as well as very high 4800 dpi resolution for well under $200.

First, there is no upgrade version but since the program can easily be found online for under $70, it won't hurt too bad if you do want to upgrade.

Photoshop Elements has been a solid program since its introduction. Previous consumer photo editing programs only allowed you to make alterations in steps, any fine tuning was out of the question. Elements changed all of that by offering so many professional level tools that many professionals made the switch.

MediaChance.com has some great free digital photo programs. They are very specialized tools, but they work great.

IrFanview is a great program for viewing images of almost any format. It reads most camera RAW files as well as proprietary and universal image formats.

Paint.NET is a free program that is designed to compete with Photoshop and CorelDraw. It works well, but is not the most intuitive.

While layers are very complex, I believe that they are often viewed as being more complicated than they actually are.

A layer is simply a picture or transparent layer placed on top of another picture. Think of it as placing clear plastic wrap on top of a photo. By creating a layer, you prevent any damage or change to the base photo.

Here is a quick list of terms that will help you figure it all out:

Layer Pallette: You can see all of your stacked layers in the Layers Pallette.

There are so many wonderful things you can do with Photoshop Elements.

You will find many of our tips in our notes from previous meetings.

Photoshop Elements Part I

Photoshop Elements Part II

Photoshop Elements Part III

Photoshop Elements Part IV

This time we will spend most of our time discussing the Magical Photoshop Elements Toolbox.

There are three kinds of tools in the Toolbox:

Hover your mouse over any area in the toolbox to see its name. Hold your left mouse button down over any tool with a little diagonal triangle at the bottom to see hidden tools with similar functions.

Selecting: These tools create "Marching Ants" that indicate that an area has been selected. Selection tools include the Marquee Tool, Lasso Tool, Magic Wand and Brush Selection Tool These are all found in the top 5th of the Toolbox.

Once and area is selected, any changes you make will only apply to the selected area.

Painting: These tools "paint" effects by holding down the left mouse button while moving the mouse in the area you want to change. Painting tools include the Paintbrush, Pencil, Erase, Red Eye, Blur, Sharpen, Sponge, Smear, and Clone Stamp tools.

All painting tools allow you to change the area that you are working on by adjusting the brush size and you can apply affects by making changes in the Options bar (tool bar under the file menu that changes when you select a tool).

Custom Tools: These are tools that don't fit into]]> http://helpmerick.com/amazing-photoshop-elements-toolbox.htm/feed 2 http://helpmerick.com/the-magic-of-digital-filters-2.htm http://helpmerick.com/the-magic-of-digital-filters-2.htm#comments Tue, 25 Jul 2006 16:49:22 +0000 Rick http://helpmerick.com/wordpr/?p=816 The Magic of Digital Filters

In the world of film photography, filters are transparent coverings that are placed over a lens to enhance or alter the image.

Digital filters serve the same purpose, but in a much more dynamic and dramatic way.

DIGITAL FILTER: Almost all image editing programs contain filters although they may be called by a different name such as Effects or Adjustments.

Here are some of the basics we discussed

at the Meeting

FINDING THE RIGHT PROGRAM

HOW TO GET PICASA:

1. Either click on this button, or go to www.picasa.com and click on the Free Download button.

In addition to discussing PowerPoint we also talked about a few PowerPoint alternatives.

OpenOffice - a great free alternative to Microsoft Office

Ulead Movie Factory - for creating Slideshows and movies on DVDs or CDs

There are a couple of others that I failed to mention at the meeting.

SmoothShow - probably the most popular slideshow creator for professions 

Picasa 2 is a free program made by Google that allows you to organize your photos without any effort on your part.

Besides organizing photos it also has some great creativity tools including gift CDs, slide shows, and blogging tools.

HOW TO GET PICASA:

1. Either click on this button, or go to www.picasa.com and click on the Free Download button.