Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 Overview & Tour

Hi, everybody--Michael Brown with you again; welcome back to Educator.com's Adobe Photoshop Elements Beginning and Intermediate course!0000

In the last two lessons, we talked about how to get the best quality images out of your camera technically and artistically to bring them into Photoshop Elements.0007

We talked about light and color and how that applies; now, it's time to get into the nuts and bolts of Photoshop Elements!0016

Let's get started.0023

I want to point out that the principal objective of this course--rather than showing you every tool, technique, feature, and method that's here in Photoshop Elements, this course is intended to give you a good understanding and a practical working knowledge of how to quickly, efficiently, and flawlessly enhance your photographic images, as well as show you how to easily utilize the text and graphic design features that are available in Elements.0025

I cannot stress enough the "practical working knowledge"; instead of bogging you down with an enormous number of things that you may never use, what you're going to learn in this course are the tools, techniques, and methods you need to work on your images and create graphics.0057

There is a lot more stuff in here, but we want to get you working and make it so that you can create cool stuff quickly, efficiently, and flawlessly.0077

So, let's get started talking about Elements!0087

A tour of the main work areas: that is what this lesson is primarily all about--to show you the parts of Elements, what is in them...and then we'll break them down in the next two lessons.0092

The first part is the Welcome screen: this is your starting point in Elements; whenever you open up the program, the first thing you're going to see is the Welcome screen.0103

Here, you have options to choose whether you want to have it open up in the Welcome screen, and always have a choice, or whether it's going to open directly in either what is called the Organizer or the Editor--and I'll show you that in just a minute, because it opens up immediately, and we're already in it.0116

The two basic parts of Photoshop Elements--the big parts: the Organizer workspace and the Editor workspace.0132

The Organizer workspace is where you import, sort, rate, and organize your images and where you choose the images you want to work on.0141

In other words, you have to bring your images in; they don't physically come in, only a representation--they always stay where they're stored, the physical image; it's just a proxy thumbnail so you can see them, then pick them; then, you open the physical image into the Editor.0149

You also--in the Organizer--you can share your work via social media and create a variety of very cool items.0167

The Editor workspace, which is what we are in right now: this is where you do your creative work--enhancing your images, creating graphic designs, panoramas, artistic creations, everything--the work is done in here.0175

So, you have an Organizer section that you get your photos into, and sort them, and organize them, and pick the best ones; and then you work on them in the Editor.0187

It's very easy to get back and forth between the two: notice this button at the bottom, right here; it says Organizer; I click on that, and it will open up Organizer immediately.0198

Here is the Organizer; this is where you do the sorting; and again, there is a button; it goes back to the Editor, over to the Organizer, and back to the Editor--very easy access between the two.0209

We're going to go backwards for a moment; I want to show you the Welcome screen, so I'm going to quit out of the Editor, quit out of the Organizer, and reopen the program.0219

Here we go: Elements 11 opens up, and this is called the Welcome screen.0230

On the Welcome screen, you have links that can take you to some tutorials and stuff for little things, and talk about what is new, and so on...also, Getting Started, Getting Help...but I'm here to give you help and get you started, so deal with me for a little while.0237

Up at the top: Organizer, Editor; these are the two buttons that you can open up either one directly from here.0253

Now, if you leave this screen as it is, it will always open up, and you will choose one or the other; if you would prefer to have it open all of the time in one or the other, go up to this little gear icon in the corner of the window, right here, and you see, "On start, always launch" either the Welcome screen, Organizer, or the Editor: you have these three options available to you.0262

We're going to leave it where it is at the default right now, at the Welcome screen, but you can set it to open up at either of the two.0288

All right, we're done; we're going to pick up, and we're going to open up into the Editor, which is where we were just a little while ago.0295

File; I'm going to open up the Getting Started; and here we are, back where we were again.0304

Let's talk about--even though the order says Organizer first--let's talk about the Editor workspace, where we've been.0313

On the left side, you see you have a toolbox with all the tools you're going to need to do anything you want.0321

In Elements 11, as opposed to just putting them in the toolbox without identification or organizing them, they have been organized into categories to make it very easy for you to know what you want.0327

The View category contains tools: Select to select and isolate areas--we talked about the categories, if you remember--selection, correction, retouch, and manipulation; here are your selection tools.0341

Corrections or retouching: that is under the enhanced tools; drawing tools for graphics, modifying tools...that is, your select, correct, retouch, and manipulation tools.0354

Tools are all on the left; for every tool, there are tool options--when you click on the tool, notice across the bottom of the viewing window, where the files are viewed (right in here, with a gray backdrop), every time you hit a tool--it doesn't matter what tool--up pops the options for that tool.0367

Now, in the previous version, 10, options for a tool were across the top here; they have been moved to this little option bin--you can always close it, but every time you go to a tool, there are your options; you can hit the Tool Options button or the X, and away it goes, and you're ready to work with it.0390

That is your tools.0406

Here, you have the option to open up some previously opened files directly, just under the Open or the File menu--there are a bunch of them; same ones.0408

Across the very top, we have a series of dropdown menus with various features and functional items; we'll talk about that in a future lesson on just the Editor.0417

Below that, there are the frequently used ones: you have three buttons here--three different ways to work on your images.0429

I am in the Expert mode, which gives you full functionality to do anything you want with extreme precision.0437

You have the Quick Edit mode, which leaves your image with a few tools and instant fixes, so you can just adjust immediately--things that you want to do.0444

There is the very simplistic methodology, the Guided Edit, which is really very cool; here is all of the stuff that you would work on in an image: brightness, skin tones, cropping, exposure, color, recomposing...all right here, and if you pick any one--let's pick an exposure control--how about just color; color control--here are the instructions and the method to do it for any one of them.0458

Recompose: there are the instructions and the sliders; it shows you how to do it, just in case you forget how to do something; how cool is that?0487

Below that, we have various photo effects that you can apply with a single button: some really cool modern effects, and even below that, some artistic arrangements and little graphic art that you can do, all from the Guided.0495

But we're going to predominantly work here in the Expert mode, but we will be showing you all of those: you have Quick, Guided, Expert.0509

On the far right is the Create button for photo prints and various and sundry items that you create; this also starts out of the Organizer.0517

On the right side, we have panels with adjustments: the Layers panel turns on and off; the Effects panel turns on and off; the Graphics panel turns on and off; Favorites, where you can set your own; and the More button gives you additional panels--you have a choice over here--that you can use, as well.0526

Let's go back to the Layers panel right here.0549

Across the bottom, there are some more tools: the Photo Bin shows you all of the files that are open (in this case, we only have one)--they all line up, and to switch from one to another, you can click there.0552

I'm in a mode called tab mode, where they all line up across the top.0565

The Tool Options button, Undo and Redo buttons, Rotate button, various layouts, and access to the Organizer--that is the bottom.0571

Toolbox, dropdown menus, the three editing modes, various panels; and some more tools across the bottom; that is the Editor workspace.0580

We've talked now about that, and we've talked about the Welcome screen, so let's get into the Organizer.0594

This is where you bring the images in, and to get there, just click the button, and the Organizer workspace opens up.0600

What you see here, first of all, most prominently...we'll just drop that out...in default mode, are all of the thumbnails of all of the items that you have imported inside of the Organizer.0609

See me scroll down here: here is every single one of them, and you think, "How do I find a particular image!?"0626

That is what the Organizer is for; this is where they all reside, in the Media Bin; when you import an image, you can import it from here, from Files, Camera, and so on, or under the File menu, same thing; and you will bring them in, and they will be in a folder.0634

So, although they all reside here, they are also in a folder; for example, let's just scroll down until something shows up...here are some images of this girl Shakay; if I click on the folder, instead of seeing all the images, now you see just the images taken of her in that folder.0652

Here is one of a car auction; here are only the images for the auction.0675

The folders show you the thumbnails; albums--you can create and take photos from different folders and put them in a specific album, so that, when you access a specific set, a specific type of photos, you don't have to jump from folder to folder; it will pull them all from the various folders that you originally brought them in from: a cool way to organize.0680

On the right side, down at the bottom, we have tools--again, Undos and Rotates, and access to the Editor, a slideshow from images that you select, and also Instant Fix: if you highlight a photo (I don't recommend this; we'll talk about this in a future one), here are some fixes, but I don't like it, because it just puts a fixed setup on there, and you may not like the result.0706

I would rather do it in the Editor; that is what the Editor is for.0736

Tags and info are another way to identify and find your photos.0739

The information for every photo--there are information tags; they are called keywords; so you can attach a keyword to items in a whole variety of places--different folders and different spots--and, by clicking on a specific keyword, it will refine these thumbnails down to just those items.0745

So, you can do this for the albums, with folders, and with keywords.0767

Across the top, we have dropdown menus, again, to help us organize.0772

Also, the tabs across here--by the way, here is the Create button again, with the same items that were over in the Editor, and to share to social media, email, Vimeo, YouTube, Flickr, SmugMug, mobile phone, create online albums...various and sundry things.0776

There are ratings to rate your images and help you sort them out.0794

We also have three new tabs here: People, Places, and Events.0798

You can take--by face recognition, if I chose to, I could take all of these images of Shakay and target them into the People mode, right here; you see, there they are; I have done that, and now, when I click, it goes only to the Shakay stuff.0804

You can also do the same thing with places, by putting a group of photos that were taken in certain spots, pretty much anywhere you want, and you can also do the same with events.0826

I'm mentioning those three only: I'll show you the People one, just for fun, but the bottom line here is efficiency again; this takes time; every single image--you have to target the person, so you have to fill it out, an image at a time.0840

You don't have to bother with that with all of the other stuff; we want to make things efficient, so we're going to deal mostly with the media window, albums, folders, tags.0855

There you have--let's go back to the Editor--a quick tour of the Organizer workspace.0866

I do want to say, again, that the objective here is to give you a practical working knowledge; when you get done, you will understand the Organizer, the Editor, and how to get everything in and out efficiently and quickly.0872

In the next two lessons, we will talk specifically about the Organizer, and then we will move on to the Editor.0890

I'll see you in the next lesson!0897