PE For Smarties

Over the years we have seen any number of yellow-covered books in the bookstore entitled " Whatever For Dummies". The range of topics seems to have ranged from religion and philosophy to storm door repairs. I bought one that dealt with my new computer system and as I progressed through I realised it was telling the absolute truth...anyone who spent money on it was a dummy.

I tried another tack - I invested in the first of my Photoshop Elements editing programs...in this case it was Photoshop Elements 3. I found it surprisingly easy to use, and as my artistic ability was on a level with a preschooler, I was rewarded with bright pop colours. On everything...

Determined to do better I bought the Photoshop Elements 10 and switched to it. A whole new world of elegant image manipulation opened up...and I discovered the layer system as well. All of a sudden I could clean up all my image files as well as making an imaginary world of my own.

Photoshop Elements has since gone to No.11 and No.12 and they have added more features. More of the power of the classic Photoshop program has been added but the difficult learning curve that you might expect with the standard program is not there. PE is really intuitive.

Now, if you'd like to equip yourself with the best introduction to Photoshop Elements, make a booking to attend the February 9th workshop with Nick Melidonis at Shoot Photography. He'll show you how to get the best from it, while creating and managing your images.

Ring Jonathan Cousins at Shoot on 9228-8232 to book a place. Beginner or enthusiast, you can place your reliance on Adobe and their Photoshop Elements program.And you won't be a dummy...

The Annual Leap Of Faith

Spring is here, the grass is riz. I wonder where the annual update to Photoshop Elements is...

Ah, It's on the net. Just announced today in fact. I daresay we'll get some boxed sets of them fairly shortly...but don't ring me up this morning to ask when because I don't know.
Suffice it to say that if you are banging out your work on an older version, this might be a good investment.

I fit into the banging away category - I started my digital adolescence with the Elements 3 version - got free with a scaner. Then I bought Elements 6, and eventually went to Elements 10. Each one was separated far enough in generation to encompass real improvements while retaining most of the useful features of the past.

Note that I said " most " - in between 6 and 10 they ditched some paste-in graphics that they considered tired. In reality they were useful - I am going to go back and capture them and store them for future use. You can never tell when you'll need a Drum Majorette's cap to put onto a bridesmaid...

The new Photoshop Elements 12 seems to have additional features that move items in the picture and then fill in the backdrop behind them. Very useful for street and event photography. There is also an improvement to the straighten tool that settles the horizon and then fills in the little wedge-shaped blank areas at the side with similar content to the main subject.

I am also looking forward to an automatic colour correct that has the capability to learn your preferences and to slap it on at a click. I hope to use other plug-ins to custom craft a look that I can teach to the Photoshop Elements 12 - then I'll just go straight to it for a 50's look. You can do that with the plug-ins now but you are bouncing back and forward to do it. One stop shop is the go.

Is this program prestigious and complex enough for your photographic business? If you need prestige and complexity to sell your services go for the full PS6 Cloud and add a host of special layers and curves and extra operations. The clients will notice, or not, as the case may be...Make sure you tell them about how you spend hours at the computer hand-crafting their images.

Make sure they don't ever get to see what your editing desktop really looks like. Coffee cup rings on your laptop never look good. Especially when they are on the screen...