Using Photoshop Elements to improve your photos

The fundamentals

This tutorial is based on some of Keith's digital photography courses that he teaches in local Adult Education centres. There are sample files that you can download to try out for yourself.

A simple midpoint adjustment brings out detail

The aim is that when you look at an image you can visualise what end result you want and choose the possible techniques to get there. This approach may not suit everyone, there is no magic checklist, no list of instructions to follow. In our links section there are many other sources of info - try them out and see which you like the best.

Photoshop Elements is a very powerful program, with many useful features. Rather than just go through its functions and menus, Keith has picked 5 basic actions that you can take to improve many of your digital photos. Use the practice files and experiment with them.

Keith uses Photoshop CS2 for the images on this site, it is more complex than Elements, but many of the manipulations he carries out could be done just as well in Photoshop Elements. The courses use Elements 2, but you should be able to work through with the original version as well.

It is suggested that you go through the tutorials in order, since they do reference previous ones. There is a (2.9 Megabyte) zipped folder of the actual sample images you can download to experiment with.

The photos were all taken on a 1.4MP Olympus CX1400. The examples in the zipped file have been reduced in size.

Northlight Images also provides commercial photography training courses for businesses, including specialist Photography training for Estate Agents and for Product Photography.

Please note. The images in this tutorial section are for personal non commercial teaching use only. They may not be used in -any- other way without the express consent of Northlight Images - see our usage and copyright page for more information.

We welcome any feedback on these tutorials - please let us know if you find them useful or have any problems.

If you are interested in joining a fairly new list for photographers of all levels, try the UK Digital Photo list at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalphotographyuk/

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The techniques

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