One drawback to digital photography is that we accumulate masses of digital images and other assets, such as audio tracks and video clips. Keeping track of everything on a monthly basis, let alone annually, is becoming something of a nightmare, especially if you plan on upgrading your skill set from amateur status to a professional occupation.

Sorting everything into meaningful collections, therefore, is the main function of the Organizer. Once installed, you'll note that it runs as a separate application, albeit one with almost inseparable ties to the photo editing part of Elements, and, indeed, with its video editing partner, Adobe Premiere Elements, which is often sold with Elements as a bundle:

Images and other digital assets are imported into the Organizer and sorted into a meaningful order using a range of clever tools such as albums, keywords, labels, place and people tags, star ratings, and metadata. Because all of these attributes can be applied to your images, its organizational and file search capabilities are very extensive, making it one of the best asset management systems in the business.

The Organizer is also the place we go to for quick fixes—Adobe calls these Instant Fixes—as well as a number of other creative activities, such as making collages, calendars, greeting cards, and slideshows. We also use the Organizer as a platform for uploading our creations to social media such as Facebook, Vimeo, Twitter, and YouTube.

The Catalog

Occasionally, users will be reminded to back up the catalog. If you have simply downloaded and installed Elements and proceeded to get on with your image organization and editing, you might not even know what this catalog is. It's important! Let's take a look at the following screenshot:

The Catalog Manager allows you to keep track of multiple catalogs although this situation is not advised to start with because it might be confusing and rename and update your catalogs when needed. Running multiple catalogs might be a good idea if you share Elements with your partner, your kids, or perhaps even your work colleagues.

Elements refers to your images using links—nothing is ever physically moved into the application, as such. When images are imported into Elements, it makes links to where the images are usually kept normally in the Pictures folder. This linking information, along with all the metadata, thumbnails, tags, attributes, and keywords—in fact, everything you do with the program, is saved to the catalog. While you can have multiple catalogs, you can only open one at a time. Your original high resolution (hi-res) files are stored elsewhere (see Chapter 2, Setting Up Photoshop Elements from Scratch). Catalogs should be backed up periodically onto a disk or a hard drive that does not contain your images—it's usually considerably smaller than the hi-res images it lists, so can be backed up to the cloud or even a small-capacity hard drive. We will cover this in more detail in Chapter 2, Setting Up Photoshop Elements from Scratch:

As you can see from the preceding illustration, importing files is actually more like linking files, that is, from their original position (on the computer's hard drive or an external drive) to the Organizer window. If you delete, move, or rename any of those files in their folders, it will break the link and you won't be able to edit it. If this happens, Elements will immediately start searching for the missing files based on the name it imported with the metadata. If it locates the lost file, it automatically re-links it. If not, then this can be done manually.

The Quick, Guided, and Expert edit modes are found in the second part of this application: the Photoshop Elements Editor workspace.

As you can see, in the Quick edit mode, the image currently being edited can be displayed in a before, after, or, as seen here, before and after display mode. The right-hand side of the following screenshot displays some of the excellent effects available in this mode:

The following screenshot is an enlarged view of the Quick mode toolbar on the left-hand side of the main edit screen:

During the edit process, you'll use the Organizer to search for and find images that are then opened in one or, depending on your creative requirements, several of the three edit modes. After editing, they are saved and appear updated back in the Organizer. The process of getting images from the Organizer to the editor are dealt with in detail in Chapter 3, The Basics of Image Editing.

As the name suggests, the Quick edit mode enables users to make simple but significant improvements to any picture file using adjustments specifically ordered, so as to produce the best editing workflow. These adjustments can include Smart Fix, Exposure, Lighting (contrast), Color, and, finally, Sharpness.

To make the editing process more visual, both this and the Guided edit mode offer the user a handy before and after viewing window, making it easy to see what the original looked like alongside the new, edited version. All three edit modes are interchangeable. This means that you can easily transfer an image from Quick, to Guided, and to Expert, and back again, should you need to.

This mode also features a range of tools that cover the most commonly used editing tasks. These tools include a Zoom tool for enlarging images, a Hand tool (for moving an enlarged image around the screen), a Quick Selection tool (for isolating parts of the image), an Eye tool (red- and pet-eye fixing), a Whiten Teeth tool (for automatically selecting and brightening teeth in one action), a Straighten tool (for leveling horizons), a Type tool (for adding text to an image), the Spot Healing and Healing Brush tools (for retouching your images), and, curiously, at the bottom of the list (I think these two features really should be at the top of the Tool Bar), a Crop and a Move tool. The performance of each tool, throughout all of Elements' edit modes, can be modified using the Tool Options panel that pops up from the bottom of the screen when clicked on. Additionally, note that each tool has different options. For many time-poor photographers, these features provide a good level of editing capability.

As the name suggests, the Guided edit workspace is packed with step-by-step advice to guide you through a range of editing tasks; there are 47 to be exact. These are presented in a beautifully designed and easy-to-use format. All that's needed is for you to choose one of the effects and follow the steps—easy!

Topics include Basics, Color, Black & White, Fun Edits, Special Edits, and Photomerge, which is a mini application designed for stitching images together into widescreen panoramas:

The preceding screenshot shows what the Guided edit screen looks like (with the Fun Edits tab selected). Note that while this screen is visually quite busy, its interactive design makes it quite clear what each of these effects look like when applied to the samples pictured.

All that's needed is for you to drag the cursor left or right to reveal the effect in a before and after style. This is good, practical software design that, in my opinion at least, should be incorporated in many other software applications.

The Guided edit mode is a great source of creativity, more so perhaps than the current Home screen. For example, if you are a bit stuck with what direction to take your photo editing, just open a picture in this mode and try some of the effects offered; most of them are bound to get your creative juices flowing nicely:

It's hard to illustrate the Guided edit mode simply because it's packed with good features, so where do you start? The preceding screenshot illustrates the Meme Maker. To create your own meme, simply choose a photo, choose the Meme Maker option (you'll find it in the Fun Edits section in the Guided window), and follow the directions on the right-hand side of the screen, from top to bottom, to make your own custom meme. It's great fun!

Having played with the Quick and the Guided edit modes, you'll find this advanced editing workspace a little challenging, especially if you are a newcomer to photo editing.

The Expert edit mode essentially relies on the user having an editing plan. It's good to have a basic idea of what you'd like to achieve with the image open on the desktop, as well as having some degree of experience with the tools needed to complete the job. In many ways, this part of Elements resembles Adobe Photoshop quite closely—although I would add that it also contains a good range of very cool processes that you will not find in Photoshop. We will cover this in more detail in Chapter 5, Easy Creative Projects:

Don't let the Expert mode put you off; its basic tools (which are dealt with in more depth in Chapter 3, The Basics of Image Editing) are easily mastered and provide any photographer or designer with a raft of powerful creative options.

Essentially, the tools and features offered in this part of Elements' workspace are far more customizable than those in the Quick and Guided edit modes.

For example, if you are trying to change the color in part of an image, but find the semi-automatic Quick Selection tool in Quick edit to be clunky and hard to control, the Expert edit mode offers not one, but 10 different selection tools, all of which are interchangeable with each other, and all of which can be infinitely fine-tuned using a range of sophisticated modification features.

This all takes time and a degree of experience but, once you have played with some of the tools in the first two modes, moving into the Expert domain will be significantly easier:

As with all the edit modes, the main window displays a Photo Bin (highlighted in pink), where currently open image files are stashed before being moved into the main edit space. There are also Rotate buttons, Undo and Redo buttons, and a Tool Options panel, which allows you to fine-tune the performance of every tool in the program—a very handy panel to familiarize yourself with because it allows you to finely control the efficacy of each tool.

When digital photography became mainstream 20 years ago, there were precious few things you could do with your images other than look at them on low resolution screens—digital printing was in its infancy, as were reliable computers, the internet, and editing software.

It took programs such as Photoshop Elements to introduce us to the concept of doing something more than just looking at images on-screen. It began with a few creative projects and is now driving a wide range of activities, ranging from book printing to slideshows, scrapbooking, and stationary:

Creative projects are an excellent way to perform relatively complex actions with ease. In the preceding screenshot, all I had to do was find eight images, open them, and choose Create | Photo Collage. The application automatically arranges the files according to the layout chosen in the right-hand panel and it's done. A time-consuming process performed automatically in less than a minute—genius!

Running through both the Organizer and all three edit modes, you'll spot the highly useful Create and Share menus. The Organizer is used as a media browser for still images, music files, and video clips, so it's designed to work with both Elements and its consumer video editing sibling, Premiere Elements. In it, you'll find a few additional features offered, in both the Create and Share menus, notably for producing video projects and uploading them to video-centric sites such as YouTube and Vimeo.

Otherwise, these two drop-down menus are identical, enabling users, after the editing is done, to incorporate them into one of the many creative projects offered, and then to share them immediately, directly out of Elements, to a range of social media platforms or local destinations such as the desktop.

Some of its original projects provide the user with great creative options. For example, anything from making a slideshow, photo collage, photo book, greeting card, or calendar, to producing your own instant movie, DVD labels, and photo prints. As indicated, its Share menu just provides you with the easy option of uploading your newly crafted work directly to Facebook, Twitter, email, Vimeo, YouTube, or the desktop.

While Photoshop Elements remains primarily involved with still image editing, Adobe Premiere Elements targets the consumer video editing market, and, increasingly so, these two applications are often sold as a bundle, simply because the line between still images and video is becoming more and more blurred.

As such, we can use the Organizer to catalog stills, HD video clips, gifs (Graphics Interchange Format files used to record short animations), audio tracks, and music, together or separately, depending on the work planned. Once organized, files can then be opened in either application – Elements or Premiere Elements – depending on how they are to be used. I edit quite a lot of video, so I find this close relationship incredibly convenient, especially where I might need to use still images in a video project, or video clips in a still image story that's, for example, to be exported to Facebook or Vimeo.

To the novice, Premiere Elements might seem unduly complex. Being a video editing application, it does deal with images and time in the one process, but this application is very much like the photo editor: you can skim through it using the automated video tools, or explore its many professional standard editing features to produce a movie with outstanding quality.

The relationship of Premiere Elements with Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe's industry-standard commercial editing suite, is similar to that of Elements and Photoshop CC. It began as a dumbed down version of the high-end commercial product, but it is now one of the best video editors on the market. Additionally, like Elements, Premiere Elements employs some incredibly powerful features that include image stabilization, an amazing instant movie feature, a wide range of professional effect looks (a look is little more than a prerecorded editing recipe designed to produce a specific color, tone or emotion to a video clip. They are great time savers), sophisticated brightness, contrast, color, and sharpness tools, and an export function that allows you to easily upload any completed video project to social media effortlessly.

If you are considering moving into video production, this is a very capable and professional tool with a great range of guided and automated functions that makes the often tedious job of editing video clips a breeze.

Panels, as Adobe states, are "…there to help you manage, monitor and modify images…" in Photoshop Elements. You'll find the most important panels in the Panel Bin, located on the right-hand side of the main screen in the Quick and the Expert edit modes. While they might not be the most glamorous parts of this editing application, they still play an immensely important part in your day-to-day workflow:

In the preceding screenshot, I have highlighted the Styles panel where, with an image open in the main window, a specific prerecorded recipe where anything from color to contrast, brightness, sharpness, and even special effects can be applied to an image, text, or layer with a click of the mouse. Simple.

Principle panels in the Quick edit mode are the Adjustments panel (Chapter 3, The Basics of Image Editing), Effects, Textures, and Frames (Chapter 5, Easy Creative Projects). Naturally, the Expert mode has a wider selection of panels that include Layers, Effects, Filters, Styles, and Graphics (Chapter 6, Advanced Editing Techniques).

There are eight more panels to be found, either by clicking on the More button, or by using the Window drop-down menu at the top of the page. Most panels also have their own drop-down menus to help organize the staggering array of features each one holds and, most importantly, to help you find the stuff you really need:

In the preceding screenshot, I have dragged most of the panels out from the right-hand Bin and attached them side by side to show you how customizable everything is in the application. Because there are so many panels in this arrangement, it would not be very practical unless you either had a very large computer monitor or were perhaps running the program over two monitors. Panels can also be made much smaller and made to float freely over the workspace.

What do these panels do?

There are a lot of panels in Photoshop Elements, with each providing essential help with the edit process. Some just refer to the Quick edit mode (such as Adjustments), while some only appear in the Expert mode (such as the Info panel). Here's an overview of what each panel offers:

• Adjustments: This provides sliders to adjust the Exposure, Lighting (contrast), Color, Balance, and Sharpness.
• Effects: This provides the user with a great range of looks, automated colors, and special effects; in essence, these are recipes that can be applied to an image with a single click.
• Textures: Elements comes with a wide range of creative assets – such as surface textures that, once clicked, apply to the opened image as a textured overlay. These are good for backgrounds, web pages, and more.
• Frames: This is used for graphic artwork. You can click on a frame thumbnail in the panel and, if never used before, it downloads it from www.adobe.com, and then automatically resizes and applies itself to the image. Clever stuff.
• Layers: This is probably the most important panel for advanced projects where text, multiple images, or other assets are added to different layers in the document, thus maintaining editability throughout the production process.
• Filter: The small filter thumbnails try to illustrate the effect of each FX filter. You can click on the thumbnail to apply the effect. You can also use the associated slider to vary the intensity of each effect. There are 98 different filters and billions of possible combinations.
• Styles: Like filters, Styles are one-click presets that are used to change the image—mostly by adding an effect to the entire layer. Where Filters and Effects presets are applied to the surface of the image to give it a different look, Styles are used to add more esoteric features such as drop shadows, bevels, glows, patterns, and glass button effects. Though there's a small photographic subset in Styles, most are used for the purposes of design rather than to improve the image. This panel holds some 176 different styles.
• Graphics: This panel contains a lot of (downloadable) clip art, text effects, scalable vector shapes, and a bucketload of picture frame styles—all of which can be applied to an image by simply clicking on the thumbnail. Because there are so many items in this panel, you can filter or sort them, according to Type, Activity, Mood, Event, Object, Season, and more. As there are well over 1,000 assets listed that can be used, most will have to be downloaded from Adobe first before they are ready to use:
  

I consider the Layer panel to be one of the most useful simply because the Layers feature enables you to combine text, selections, multiple images and masking all in the same (multi-layered) file. Aside from being able to combine multiple assets in a single file, each individual layer remains independently editable. In the preceding screenshot, you can see that the image has its original photo layer (the cat), plus two non-destructive Adjustment Layers, which are used to change the tone in the image without compromising the quality.

Other panels

Once you get started with the edit process, you'll notice even more panels lurking in the back of the Panel Bin. While still very useful, these particular panels provide slightly more esoteric assistance to the edit process and should probably be left until you have developed a reasonable skill level. These panels include the following:

• Actions: Essentially, this is a watered-down preset feature that's been copied over from Photoshop. The supplied Actions can be replayed on images to achieve goals such as adding a photo border, resizing, cropping, and more. An Action is just a small file of instructions—you can find more Actions online, download them, and import them in to Elements to boost the paltry range supplied by default.
• Color Swatches: These are used to choose colors for a range of features, from type to pencil, to paintbrush to background colors. The panel allows you to make your own custom Swatch for specific projects.
• Histogram: This displays the range of tones present in any image and, more accurately, where in the brightness range those tones sit (such as midtone, highlights, whites, blacks, underexposed, and overexposed).
• History: This is a useful panel that displays your editing steps—from opening the image to saving the new work. By clicking one of the steps displayed in the panel, you can go back in time to a previous state, mouse click by mouse click. This is handy if you decide that you have edited the image a bit too much; just click back a few steps to a previous version.
• Favorites: This is a big timesaver; you can keep your frequently used Styles and Graphics in one place by dragging the relevant thumbnail into the Favorites panel:

Here's what a floating panel might look like:

It's convenient because it provides a wider view of the main image while the panel can be manually shifted to "float" over the least important part of the image being edited:

• Navigator: This is another unsung hero of this program. The Navigator panel displays the image you have open in the main window. This is especially useful when the main window display is enlarged so that it is bigger than the screen, because it's then hard to know which part of the image you are seeing.
• Info: This is a useful panel that displays the RGB brightness values in any part of the image that you mouse over. Readout works regardless of the tool currently being used. It can be set to display RGB values (0-255), web color, grayscale, Hue, Saturation, Brightness (HSB), and measurement dimensions. It is a handy helper if your computer monitor is not calibrated correctly.

Tip

If you accidentally close a panel by clicking on the x icon on the top-right of the panel on Windows, or top-left of the panel on a Mac, it's simple enough to reinstate that same panel from the window drop-down menu.

Note

Custom Workspace? One of the big differences between Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements is in the former's ability to save various processes that you might be working on as a custom preset so that they can be reused at another time. This is especially useful in the matter of a workspace configuration (essentially, a workspace is a record of where all the panels and tools are placed while working in the main window). In Photoshop, you can open the panels you prefer to use and close the ones you don't, and then save that configuration as a personal "workspace." If the desktop gets messy and you accidentally close a few of your favorite panels, that original workspace can be reloaded from the Window menu, and everything returns to the way it was before you messed it up. However, it's a curious thing—though you can create a custom workspace in Elements, there's no function to save it for use at a later time. In the Expert edit mode, point your cursor to the More tab at the bottom-right-hand side of the main window (to the right of the Graphics panel) and click on the tiny arrowed symbol to the right of the rectangular More tab. This produces a drop-down menu displaying the panels that are not currently docked in the Panel Bin. Choose the Custom Workspace option, and then go ahead and close the panels you don't use and open and reposition the panels you need to see all the time. They can either float over the main window (which can be annoying unless you have a big screen), or drag the new panel to the top of the Panel Bin and you'll see it highlighted in blue as it docks, or plugs, into the existing set of tabs. You can arrange them to be stacked, tabbed, or sit side by side. However, if you close and restart the program, all your panels will default back to their original layout.

In this chapter, we have learned about the different parts that make up the Photoshop Elements image editing application. We now understand that this package not only offers a comprehensive suite of powerful editing tools, but its Organizer, running as a separate application to the editing program, can be used to catalog all our assets in one place: as stills, music, clips, and HD videos.

Then, depending on the level of editing required and your user experience, it's relatively simple to achieve quite complex edits using any of the semi-automated processes seen in the Quick mode. That said, we now know that it's also possible to take far greater control by exploring the Expert edit mode in greater depth.

The next chapter highlights the best way to set up a powerful editing computer, how to import images into the Organizer, how to work with catalog backups, and how to get your media into a cohesive order using albums, tags, metadata, keywords, and the powerful search facility.