Click on any phrase to play the video from that point.
[Learn, The How To series from Adobe]
[video2brain]
Hello, I'm Tim Gray, and I'm going to show you how you can
utilize Adobe Photoshop Elements to work on photographic images
that are being managed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.
When I teach photographers how to make the most of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
in their digital photography workflow, I often hear feedback about how they appreciate
that Lightroom was obviously created with the photographer in mind.
Lightroom provides an efficient workflow and also includes some very powerful tools
for producing optimized images of exceptional quality.
Every now and then, though, you may find you want to perform a task
that Lightroom doesn't offer but that is available in Adobe Photoshop Elements.
Fortunately, it's possible to have Lightroom and Elements work together
in order to provide you with the maximum flexibility when working on your photos.
For example, on a recent trip to the Palouse Region of eastern Washington State,
I was on the search of some great fields of yellow canola flowers.
When I found them, I tried to find a way to photograph the flowers
to convey the experience of being there.
In this case, I opted to capture multiple frames,
with the intent of later stitching the images together into a composite panorama.
Lightroom itself doesn't include tools for assembling a composite panorama,
so this is a perfect example of when you might want to include Elements
as part of your Lightroom workflow.
Let's take a look at how it works.
The first step is to configure Elements as an external editor within Lightroom.
To do so, we can simply choose "Photo" "Edit In"
and then "Edit In Other Application."
Because another application is not currently configured as an external editor,
Lightroom will let us know that that's the case.
We could have simply chosen the preferences option from the menu
in order to configure an external editor,
but Lightroom is nice enough to provide us with a preferences button right here
so that we can go directly to the external editing tab in the preferences dialog.
The top half of this tab relates to the use of Photoshop as an external editor.
We're going to configure Photoshop Elements as an external editor,
so we'll work in the bottom half where we can define an additional external editor.
To configure Elements as an external editor,
we first need to choose it as an application.
So we'll click the "Choose" button,
and then navigate to the location where Photoshop Elements is installed.
That means the Photoshop Elements 9 folder,
and then we'll choose the Photoshop Elements Editor application.
You can then click "Choose,"
and Photoshop Elements is now configured as the external editor.
We can then configure the particular settings related to the use of Elements
as an external editor for our images.
We can specify whether we want files to be sent to Elements
as a TIF or PSD file--
I use the TIF file format--
and which color space we'd like to use.
Lightroom utilizes ProPhoto RGB internally,
but that's a very large color space, and therefore I only recommend using
if you're working in 16 bits per channel.
In the case of Elements, we'll generally be working in the 8 bits per channel mode,
and so instead of ProPhoto RGB, I typically use Adobe RGB.
If you're preparing images that will only be displayed with a monitor or digital projector
and not printed, then you might want to choose sRGB.
In this case, we'll utilize Adobe RGB.
We can also adjust the bit depth.
But again, Elements only supports a small number of options
when it comes to 16-bit mode,
and so we'll work in the 8 bits per components mode.
The resolution setting is really purely a matter of convenience.
Changing this number will not affect how Elements works with your images.
It's only an issue when you go to print the images,
and even at that point you can always change its value if you need to.
So in this case, I'll just leave the number alone.
Since I'm working the TIF file format, I can also specify a compression option.
I can apply no compression, LZW compression, or Zip compression.
I utilized LZW compression in order to reduce the overall files size
without sacrificing image quality.
I can also change the file naming structure for the images that I'm editing in Elements.
If I click a popup, I can choose "Edit," for example,
and then change the file naming structure.
In this case, I'm using the original file name with the word "Edit" appended to it.
That works perfectly fine for me, so I'll just click "Done"
to accept those settings.
At this point, I've configured Elements as an external editor,
so I'll click "Okay" to continue.
I'll then switch to the gird mode,
and I'll click on the first image in my composite panorama
and then hold the "Shift" key and click on the last image in my composite.
With all seven images selected, I can now choose
"Photo" "Edit In" "Edit In Photoshop Elements Editor."
When I do so, Lightroom will ask me how I want to edit these images.
In this case, because I'm working with raw captures,
my only option is to edit a copy of the image with the Lightroom adjustments applied.
For other file types, I could also choose to edit a copy without Lightroom adjustments
or to edit the original image.
Obviously in this case, we'll be using the "Edit a Copy With Lightroom Adjustments" option.
I can also adjust my copy file options.
By expanding this section, you'll see that the controls here
are exactly those that we already established when configuring Elements
as an external editor.
The options here simply allow you to override those default settings.
But I'm perfectly happy with these settings, so I'll leave them as they are.
I can also choose whether I want these images--the copies that I'm creating--
to be stacked with the original.
Most often, I prefer to stack the copies,
but in this case, since I'm going to create a composite that includes seven images,
I don't want all seven copies associated with the originals.
To me that would just get a little confusing, so I'm going to leave
the "Stack with Original" checkbox turned off.
With all my options established, I'm ready to send these images to Elements
and so I'll click the "Edit" button.
Lightroom will then process the images, and if Elements is not already running,
it will launch it and open all of the images within the Elements editor.
As you can see, all of my images have now been opened within Elements.
Of course, I have multiple images,
but I want to process them in a unique way.
Specifically, I want to assemble these images into a composite panorama.
So rather than working on these individual images,
I'm going to choose "File" "New"
"Photomerge Panorama" from the menu.
This will bring up the Photomerge dialog,
where I can determine the settings for creating my panorama.
In this case, I have a series of images that have already been opened
thanks to Lightroom, and so I can simply click the "Add Open Files" button.
All of the images will be added to the list of files
to be processed with Photomerge.
I can use the "Auto" option for layout because Elements is smart enough
to figure out exactly how to blend these images together,
and of course I'll turn on the "Blend Images Together" checkbox
so the result will be a composite panorama
that's actually been blended together.
In this case, I don't need to remove vignetting from the images,
and I don't need to apply any geometric distortion correction.
So I'm ready to assemble my panorama.
All I have to do is click "Okay," and the Elements editor will get to work.
When Elements is finished processing my images, as you can see,
I have a finished composite panorama, which in this case
is the blending of seven individual images.
All I need to do in this case is crop the image to finalize the effect.
I just need to make sure that I'm only including
actual pixels in the final image.
That looks pretty good, so I'll go ahead and apply that crop,
and I have my final panorama.
I can then choose "File" "Save As" from the menu
and navigate to a location where I'd like to save my image and give it a name.
In this case, I'll call it "Canola Panorama."
I'll save it as a TIF file, and I don't need to include this image
in the Elements organizer since I'm now using Lightroom
to manage my images.
I'll go ahead and click "Save" and click "Okay" to accept
my TIF options for this image, and everything is finished,
as far as Elements is concerned.
At this point, I can switch back to Lightroom.
Now because I completed a completely new image within Elements,
I'll need to import that image into Lightroom.
So I'll click the "Import" button in the bottom left of the library module,
and then I'll navigate to the location where I saved my panorama.
In this case, I saved it in a folder specific to panoramas,
and so I'll choose that folder and then click the "Import" button
in order to import my canola panorama.
And here we have it.
The image that I created utilizing the Photoshop Elements editor
is now managed within Lightroom.
And of course, at any time, I could send this image back to Elements
if I needed to by choosing the "Photo" "Edit In"
"Edit In Photoshop Elements" option from the menu.
I believe most photographers will find that the tools available in Lightroom
for optimizing your images provide everything you need
and more in most cases.
However, if you want to utilize some of the unique features of Photoshop Elements
for a particular photo or series of photos, you have that option.
And as you can see, the process is rather straightforward.
