A Quick Primer

1. ADOBE
PHOTOSHOP
BASIC USE
FOR PERFECT PICTURES
(ELEMENTS)

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Fact: Online content with pictures
gets more shares
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Go to
http://www.adobe.com
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The Adobe Website
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You can’t “buy” Adobe programs anymore,
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And most of them are available only through a
subscription,
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But you can get Adobe Lightroom
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and Adobe Photoshop Elements as
a one-time purchase
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Anyway, let’s do some basic photo editing
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with Adobe Photoshop Elements
(Version 6)
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It’s not the latest version,
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but you will still get an idea how it works.
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This is your dashboard.
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This left panel here contains your editing tools
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Open a folder where your images are
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Use any file you can afford to lose
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in case you accidentally save all the changes
you made.
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Click on your file folder located on your dock
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Scroll down to find your file
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Click on the file, -hold- the mouse button and --
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Drag it to your Adobe Photoshop icon,
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Adobe automatically opens that file.
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Tadaa!
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What tool do we use first?
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The Crop Tool.
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I think the Crop Tool is one of most used
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Editing tools in photo editing programs.
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Before you post a picture to facebook,
The first thing you usually do
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is use your phone’s crop tool, right?
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Adobe isn’t that different from how your phone
does editing.
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Click on that Crop Tool, hold that click
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While holding that mouse button, drag from this corner
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to wherever, eyeballing it as you go,
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Then unlick the mouse.

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This is how it should look like when you unclick
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Notice the little broken lines that frames the picture?
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And that green check mark and red ‘Do not’ sign?
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The shaded part of your picture will get cut out
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Click on the green Check Mark to crop
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Crop successful.
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Before Cropping After
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Cropping subtly or not-so-subtly shifts the focus
of the eyes
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to a more specific part of an image.
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Picture by Margarita Felix
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You can salvage otherwise boring shots
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and give your images that oomph, polish,
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and professionalism that sets you apart
from competition.
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Or gee, you just want your pics to look nice. 
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Moving on to the right panel:
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Click on “Quick” to access other commonly used
tools
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You should see this panel right after you click
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This panel has all the quick picture edits:
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General Fixes,
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Lighting tweaks,
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Color,
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Sharpen image Tool.
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How to use Red Eye fix? Click on Quick Edit:
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Click on that Red Eye icon:
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Look for the crosshair cursor whenever you mouse over image
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Click cursor on a corner closest to the red area,
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Drag, then let go from the opposite corner
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You should see this by now: Red eye gone.
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Now do the same thing on the other eye.
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Before and After:
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What if your image is okay, if only
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it were a bit lighter, darker, etc? Use Smart Fix
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The Smart Fix Auto button is your quickest fix
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that would likely get all your image tweaks done,
one click.
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But if the auto button fails, toggle this slider here
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for more control over the smart fix effect
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Now we tackle Lighting.
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Are the shadows too dark? then you use
Lighten Shadows
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Drag just a little to the right to lighten shadow,
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Drag a little to the left to decrease effect,
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When you reach the extreme left end of the slider,
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you get to see how your original picture looks like.
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Before and After:
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The Lighten shadow tool even brought out her hair
highlights
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Feel free to play with the sliders.

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This trick is useful to gauge how much you should

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make adjustments to your image.

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Click on that green check mark to save changes.

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But what if there’s too much ‘light’ in your image

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that the highlights hurt your eyes?

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You use the Darken Highlights tool.

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Drag it to right to activate tool,

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to the left to lessen intensity of effect
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Click on green Check mark to save changes.
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Before and After:
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If you’ve noticed, there are lots of “Auto” buttons
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that can fix things faster for you. They don’t give
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perfect results every time, and the sliders are more
efficient.
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Midtone Contrast is when you’re trying to fix
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The inbetween qualities of your image :
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It’s not the shadows, or the highlight, but you know
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there’s something ‘off’ with it. Use Midtone.
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Experiment a bit, trust your eyes.
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For overall Color adjustments, we use the Color tools.
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Saturation is for how strongly the colors show on
screen
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If you have particularly pale or dull pictures,
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Or pictures so ‘colorful’ it hurts your eyes,
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This is your fix. Drag slider to either side.
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Before and After:
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Hue can give the appearance of a spot color change
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when you have a solid black/grey background
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Before and After:
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You can use this tool to make a character look
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seasick or zombie-like, burning with fever, cold, etc.
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By the way, that rainbow guide bar tells
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what hue shows on screen when you
use sliders.
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The Temperature tool takes care of the image
temperature.
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If you want to make a picture look warm, sunny,
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or make it look really cold,
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Or you want to offset the excess coolness or warmth
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then you use the Temperature tool.
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Before and After:
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It looks really warm and toasty
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This effect is perfect for pictures in a coffee brochure,
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made to blend in with the roasted coffee color theme.
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Now we have the Tint tool.
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It works like the Temperature tool, but
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gives your images either a greenish or pinkish cast.
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Before and After:
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You can use this tint to achieve a Springtime effect,

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or complement an environmental copy/blog post.
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The Tint bar also has this ‘pink’ effect:
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Use this for achieving a romantic/dreamy, or girly
touch
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Magazines are a very good resource
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for ideas and inspiration on photo color themes.

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Lastly, we have the Sharpen tool.
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Repair blurry pictures, or give more definition to
images
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After
Before
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For best results, use on high resolution images.
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If you use it on low resolution images,
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then try to enlarge it later,
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the pixels will only get exaggerated.
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You can do so much more with Photoshop
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and we barely scratched the surface.
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Have fun! :)
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“The thing is to become a
master and in your old age to
acquire the courage to do
what children did when they
knew nothing. ”
Ernest Hemingway
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