Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 Lesson Summary

Hi, everyone--Mike Brown with you one more time with another lesson in Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 from Educator.com!0000

This is the final lesson.0007

You have been a long ways; you have studied a lot; if you are still with me, I must tell you that I really commend you for all of the effort you have put in, and time that you have put in, to go through this entire course.0010

If you have gone through this entire course, you have learned an enormous amount about, not only just Photoshop Elements and how to work with photos and graphics and things, but how to discipline yourself to actually go through a long course like this, spend the time, do the study, and learn.0023

In this final lesson, I want to do a brief summary of what you have learned and my philosophical lesson to you on where you should go next.0043

Let's go ahead and get started, and back up way back to the beginning.0055

If you remember, Photoshop Elements is exactly three programs in one: the Organizer, for the editing, sorting, and rating...0059

And you saw that, in truth of fact, the Organizer is very useful and very easy--you import your images; they're in folders; they're in albums; you can attach keywords to easily find them.0068

It really helps you in sorting and finding the images to move forward into Camera Raw--what a cool little program!0081

Camera Raw is that in-between-er where you can take those images out of Organizer--raw images--and you can open them up, and you can apply initial corrections that are totally non-destructive, that you can always change.0090

Then, you move on into Photoshop Elements itself--the Editor, where you do your creative work.0104

This is an integrated group of three programs.0110

Take your photos; bring them in and organize them; do a little preliminary work; and then have a great time, making them into great images.0114

If you remember now (I'm sure you do, because you have used and learned everything), there are four basic categories that I have broken this program down into: corrections (which are very simple--they're primarily the exposure and color); selections...0122

The most important technique in any photo editing program is how you isolate the areas and do it flawlessly--and the flawlessly is the key--making the edges either hard or soft, appropriately, so that when you make your corrections or your retouching, it all blends together and is undetectable.0139

The retouching itself--the tools are fairly simple to use; now, it's up to you to continue to practice (we'll talk more about this as we go along in this lesson, but)--practice is what makes perfect.0164

How to use the tools is one thing; but applying them and developing your own techniques and alterations and takeoffs on techniques, to create those flawless results, just requires a lot of doing it over and over and over again.0177

Manipulation, of course, is the sizing, distorting, combining, making composites (which are phenomenal items--that you can actually take multiple images and put them together and make another image that nobody can tell was anything but a singular image--and again, those take time to do)...0193

I have one little tip for you that I'm just going to throw in here: now that you have all of the techniques, and you understand what this program is all about, you can pick up all sorts of ideas by going to YouTube and going through either Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.0211

As you can see, while you may not be in Photoshop...but trust me, this is the same as Photoshop in terms of working on the images.0229

By going to YouTube, now, when they go through the steps of working on the images in the demos in YouTube, which they really don't define very well--how they do the individual things--you're going to know how to do it, and you will have the idea.0236

"Oh, I see this cool thing that he is doing; I'll make a takeoff, and I'm going to take it and run with it myself."0249

All sorts of that--all from these four categories that you have learned.0255

Now that you have completed the course: two simple, yet very, very important axioms apply.0261

Practice, practice, practice; you have heard it before; you will hear it again; I have been doing Photoshop and Photoshop Elements for 22 years now, and I'm still learning techniques, and I'm refining my own techniques and coming up with great new ideas.0270

I'm going to show you one, here, in just a minute.0286

It's all practice, because if you don't use it, you will lose it--and that is absolutely paramount.0288

You spent a lot of time and effort to learn this course and get to this point; now, you have to apply it.0297

So, I'm going to say it one more time (broken record here): Practice, practice, practice; if you don't use, you will lose it.0304

If you have gone to the trouble of spending time to get to this point, to hear me say this to you, you have really invested time and effort into something that was really good for your creativity; so do practice and continue to use it.0311

Now, I want to show you an image that I just took three days ago.0327

I was hired by a gentleman who saw a technique that I have been doing to portraiture, and he really wanted that technique for himself, so he hired me to take some really cool images of him.0332

Here is one that I took0343

This really sums up all of the categories and the parts--everything that we have done here is summed up, kind of, in this image.0345

This is a very cool image.0353

It looks like a very sepia-tone look, which...you know the sepia tone, and right here--here is the original image of this--the nice photograph, nice clean shot--but it's just a photo.0355

Remember how this has all progressed: and what I did from that photo--we're just going to back it all the way in--I'm going to turn that off, and then I'm...remember, Colorize.0369

That is all I have done here; I took a final desaturated look that I have created, with a gritty feel to it, and we did the Hue Saturation--notice here?0380

Now, I did this in Photoshop, so you will see that a lot of these adjustment layers, which you see here (a whole lot of adjustment layers in here)--remember, we have those.0389

I have also cut out pieces and put them in as separate layers--physical pieces.0399

We have Curves, Curves, Curves, Curves--Curves is a little more sophisticated than Levels, but it does the same thing, so there you have exposure adjustments with various layer masks that you have seen before.0404

We get up...there is Hue Saturation; there is Hue Saturation again; Curves, Hue Saturation...most of it is all Curves, and here is one Levels that I put on at the end.0417

I also did a blend with black-and-white; I turn that off...and this was a real blast of color and grittiness.0428

This is a technique that I use, right here, to transform a regular image to look like this.0440

Then, that is blended at a lower opacity, and you put it together with the black-and-white image, also at a lower opacity, and add all of these other adjustments.0446

Toss in the Colorize feature, and this is what you get--this beautiful old-time sepia look.0457

I just want to show you--we'll zoom it up where we can really see the details.0465

Look at the character in his face; you see all this detail in the hair--that is from, remember, Shadows and Highlights, to pull that down and pull the detail out of the hair.0469

You can see all of the detail from the High Pass Sharpening that I did, and quality level to bring up all of the look in everything else, and a little bit of vignetting...everything in this image is what I taught you to do in this course.0483

Nothing in this image is anything different than you already know how to do.0502

So, that just shows you what you can do; and now, I want to close with a little of my own personal philosophy.0507

Remember, at the start of this, I said where to go next?0516

Well, a little bit of my finishing thought to you--that is, to get ahead in life an business, it does not matter at the end of the day whether it's a millimeter or it's a mile; all that matters is that you keep moving forward.0520

If you remember these three words, this is the key to success in anything you do.0548

If you follow this mantra, I guarantee that you will achieve your life's goals.0555

It not only applies to Photoshop Elements, but to your life.0560

I'll close this by saying "Thanks again" for joining me on this adventure and this trip that you have taken.0565

I hope you have really enjoyed it and learned a lot.0571

Apply it, and I wish you the best of luck in everything you do in your life!0574