In this class, Lesa leads you on a journey through the most practical and non-destructive editing techniques in Photoshop Elements. Learn the truth about resolution, how to resize images without quality loss, discover the basics of layers and layer masks, how to create gorgeous grayscales, delicious duotones, festive frames, how to zap backgrounds, fix stubborn red-eye, and more!
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Welcome to Practical Photoshop Elements, my name is Lesa Snider King, I am a graphics instructor and I also right for a slew of different magazine including Element Techniques, Photoshop User, Layers and Macro Magazine. I also teach at a bunch of conferences including Photoshop world. In this class, I'm going to teach you the most practical techniques that you need to have in your bag of tricks for editing images and photoshop elements.We're going to start off with resolution, I'm going to teach you what the heck it is and when it should matter to you. I'm also going to show you how to resize an image for print or for use on the web or for attaching to an email. I'm also going to teach you all about layers and layer masks and we're going to talk about how to change the color of an object, how to zap backgrounds and much, much more, so let's go ahead and get started.Resolution is one of the most difficult concepts to crash when you start editing digital images, and that's what we're going to talk about in this lesson. Before we talk about resolution, I need to tell you what a pixel is, a pixel is a tiny block of color and together thousands of them make up beautifully photos that see on your screen.So let's take this birthday cake as an example, how to [xx] the magnifying tool and zoom into this area right here on the candles and as I start to zoom in, you see all the tiny individual blocks of color, those are pixels and together they comprise your whole photo. Well, you'll hear the term resolution throwing around a whole lot and resolution simply means how many of those pixels are smashed together in one unit of measurement, are there that's the unit measurement on your screen or a unit of printed length when you get to print the image.And really, no matter what anybody else tells you, resolution really only matters when you print, okay because when you send your image to the printer, those pixels need to be compressed tightly into the space, that way your photo prints as a beautifully smooth print. When they are kind of loosely compacted together in that space, they do not print very well as you will have found out, if you have ever tried to print any image that has been posted on a website.You will get a nasty print and you will get what is called pixelation which is when you see the actual individual pixels of the image. But to really understand what resolution is all about, we need to head to the kitchen. So here we are in kitchen with chef King, to really understand the concept of resolution, I would like you to start thinking about pixels as individual granules of brown sugar.And I want you demonstrate resolution here with this measuring cup, I'm going to empty a large part of this bag into set measuring cup. Here we go, so we have roughly two cups of brown sugar. Now, I have not compacted it, it's just loosely poured into the cup, think of this as a low resolution. When you send an image to the printer what we need to do is we need to tightly compact these pixels together in order to make a high quality print. If we were just going to post an image on the web, or send it as an email attachment we really don't care because unless you're going to print that image, it's the pixel dimensions that matter.You really don't have to worry about resolution unless you're going to print the image. when you do print that image, you need to make sure that the individual pixels or granules of brown sugar are tightly compacted together, so let's take a look at what happens to this brown sugar when we raise its resolution, when we compact it together.We're not going to add any more brown sugar, we're just going to really pack it down tightly, just as if we were jamming those pixels together of a print. And if we keep going, now we have about one cup, so we didn't add any more brown sugar, we just changed its resolution. So no matter what anybody else tells you, resolution really only matters when that image is headed to a printer and you need to tightly compress those pixels together in order to get a really good high quality print.
Join National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) Executive Director, Larry Becker, as he takes you through the finer points of Photoshop Elements 9, what makes it different from regular Photoshop, and how to get the most out of it for your photography as you learn the basics of the program and how to use it in your photography workflow.
Join National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) Executive Director, Larry Becker, as he takes you through the finer points of Photoshop Elements 9, what makes it different from regular Photoshop, and how to get the most out of it for your photography as you learn the basics of the program and how to use it in your photography workflow.
