Starter Tips for Photoshop Elements

You've been saving up for a copy of Photoshop Elements (PSE), so you can dabble in a little digital scrapbooking, but you open it up and have no clue where to begin. You're probably wondering... What is a layer? What is a filter? And how do I do something as simple as changing a photo to black and white?

As the process of learning PSE can be daunting, we thought we'd share a few tips with you to get you going.

To resize an image, you can use Alt+Ctrl+I or go to the Image Menu, select Resize and then Image Size. The same dialog box will appear with either option, it just depends on whether you like to use Shortcut keys or not. You then have the choice of resizing your image by percent, inches, centimeters, etc.

To change your photo to black and white, go to the Enhance menu, select Adjust Color and then Adjust Hue/Saturation (or Ctrl+U). You then want to pull the Saturation setting all the way to the left (so it equals -100).

To create a sepia-toned photo, you open the Adjust Hue/Saturation dialog box (Ctrl+U) and click on the colorize checkbox. Then, drag the hue slider from left to right until you find the color you like. For a brown tone, the hue value should be around 40. To create a deeper or lighter tone, just adjust the saturation slider until you get the effect you like.

NOTE: These effects will change the actual pixels of the image. If you just want to create a layer, that will leave the original image intact, you can create an adjustment layer that will create the same effect (Layer Menu --> New Adjustment Layer or click on the half-black/half-white circle in your layer window and select Adjust Hue/Saturation).

Happy (Digital) Scrapping!!