Adobe Photoshop Elements for Mac Editing Tricks
If you\’re like me you\’ve taken tons of photos with your digital camera and now they are all stowed away somewhere on the hard drive of your Mac. Does sound like you? Are your photos in need organizing and editing but you don\’t know where to start? Since I have been there I hope to provide some advice to help you get started in digital photo editing with Adobe Photoshop Elements Mac Version 4.0.
To begin with you need some digital photo editing software. I would recommend Adobe Photoshop Elements Mac Version 4.0, which is now available for the Mac. It is compatible with G-series as well as the new Intel Macs. Photoshop Elements is based on the market-leading professional Adobe Photoshop software. Aimed at the home digital photo enthusiast, elements performs basic photo editing tasks quickly and easily and there are also many sophisticated Photoshop features available to you at the click of a mouse.
The interface is clear and well laid out, a great feature for the digital photo editing beginner is the use of descriptive icons, where you hang your mouse over an icon and it shows a description of its function. Organising your photos is a snap, Elements allows you to manage, sort, delete and view your picture collection in many different ways including face tagging and keyword tagging. It also displays an exhaustive list of file properties for each of your images so you\’ll never misplace a photo on your hard drive again. Also, a partnership between Adobe and Kodak gives you the opportunity to share photos online, print greetings cards, custom calendars or photo books. Before you eject the install cd, make sure you copy the Goodies folder to your hard drive – it contains loads of frames, backgrounds and extras to play around with.
A very handy feature is Quick Fix which allows you to perform basic editing functions which correct the most common digital photo flaws in one handy location. With a few mouse clicks smart fix and auto red-eye removal will give you a photo that is ready to print. A few other functions include the straighten tool which gives you the ability to straighten and crop crooked photos and the skin tone adjustment tool, which makes skin tones appear more life-like. A few of the more advanced features include the magic selection brush and magic extractor tool – I have used them often in Photoshop CS2 and am quite impressed with how well they performed in Photoshop Elements Mac Version 4.0. The magic selection brush allows you to scribble on an object and, if there is enough contrast between it and the background, Elements will select it for you. The magic extractor is even better; this tool is easy to use and allows you to separate objects from the background of an image extremely accurately in seconds (this works better than the extract function in the full-priced Photoshop CS2 – but don\’t tell anyone I told you!).
Hopefully you now understand that if you want to edit your photos with no trouble with and a minimum of fuss, and get them off your hard drive for people to see, Adobe Photoshop Elements Mac Version 4.0 offers all the functionality you\’ll ever need and is excellent value for money.
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