Click on any phrase to play the video from that point.
[♪ Music ♪] [lynda.com presents]
[excerpt from: Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 for Windows]
[Essential Training with Jan Kabili]
Photoshop Elements 7 is the latest version of Adobe's photo editing
and photo organizing program that's designed for non-professionals.
Elements is packed with features to help amateur photographers at every stage
of digital photo processing, from photo organizing, to editing, to output.
[Watch Photoshop Elements 7 Essential Training at www.lynda.com/pse7]
If you're someone who loves to take snapshots of your family and friends,
or if photography is your hobby, but you don't make your living from it,
then Elements is made for you.
This movie is intended to be a quick overview of the kinds of things that you can do
in Elements 7, and to show you where to go in the program to do those things.
If you haven't launched Elements, go ahead and do so now.
You can launch it from the Windows start menu at the bottom of the screen,
or if you have a shortcut to Elements on your desktop,
double-click that shortcut to launch the program.
This is the first screen that you'll see when you launch Elements.
It's called the Welcome screen.
Take a look over on the right side of the Welcome screen,
where you see these 4 buttons.
These buttons represent the 4 kinds of tasks that you can do in Elements.
If you read them from left to right, they represent a typical photograph workflow.
So, for example, you might start off by organizing your photos
so that they're easier to find later.
And then you might edit a few of them, either improving their photo quality
or changing their content.
You might go on to create some photo projects, like slideshows or books or calendars.
And finally, you might want to share your photos or your photo projects with family and friends.
Each one of these buttons will take you to the place in Elements
where you can start these kinds of tasks.
There are 2 major work spaces in Elements.
One is called the Organizer, and you can access that work space
by clicking any one of 3 buttons here, the Organize button,
the Create button, and the Share button.
You can start all 3 kinds of tasks from the Organizer.
The second major work space is called the Editor,
and you access that from the Edit button here in the Welcome screen.
There are other ways to access the Editor too, as we'll see.
Let's start by taking a quick look at these 2 spaces.
I'm going to click the Organize button here, and that launches the Organizer work space.
The Organizer work space has 2 sides.
The left side is called the Photo Browser.
In my photo browser, I have a few of my personal photos.
You won't see these in your photo browser.
Yours will be blank if you've never launched the program before,
but I just wanted you to get a sense of where the photo thumbnails live.
On the right side of the organizer is the task pane.
The task pane changes depending on which button is clicked at the top up here.
We have the Organize button clicked, and so we see in the task pane
some features that help you to organize your photos into albums
and by adding searchable keyword tags, and we'll learn how to do both in future movies.
If we had clicked the Create button back in the Welcome screen
instead of the Organize button, we would be taken into the Organizer,
but the Task pane would look like this.
It would show us these options for creating photo projects.
And if we had clicked the Share button back in the Welcome screen,
the Organizer would look like this, showing us options for sharing our photos online,
by e-mail, in print, and on CD or DVDs.
We're going to be taking a closer look at the Organizer in future movies.
For now, let's jump over to the Editor to see what that looks like.
We could go back to the Welcome screen and click the Edit button there,
or here in the Organizer, we can go to the Menu bar at the very top of the screen,
click on the Editor button, and choose from 1 of 3 flavors of Editor:
the Quick Fix Editor, the Full Edit, or the Guided Edit.
Let's start with Quick Fix and see what that looks like.
This is the Editor.
If you had an image open in the Editor, it would appear over here on the left,
and on the right, because we're in Quick Edit mode,
you see options for fixing common photo problems with some simple sliders.
Let's take a look at what Guided Edit looks like
by clicking the "Guided" button here at the top of the right-hand pane.
Guided Edit is a series of tutorials on specific techniques for improving your photos.
So, for example, you can adjust brightness and contrast, enhance colors,
touch up scratches and so on.
Finally, let's take a look at Full Edit by clicking this button
at the top of the right-hand pane, and that brings up the Full Editor.
Full Edit gives you complete control over all aspects of editing your photos.
It's very similar to the full-fledged Adobe Photoshop,
which brings up the question that I often hear.
Should I be using Photoshop, or should I be using Elements?
My short answer is that if you're a professional photographer or professional designer
or perhaps a fine artist who needs to make high-end prints, then yes,
you should be using Photoshop.
Otherwise, give Elements a try.
You'll be amazed at how similar the feature sets of the 2 programs are.
Now, that's not to say that they're exactly the same.
There are a number of features in Photoshop for more advanced users
that you won't find in Elements.
Here's a quick list of some of those features:
advanced color management, the channels panel, the pen tool,
the paths panel, CMYK and Lab color, direct layer masking,
layer comps, HDR imaging, vanishing point, text on a path,
web page slicing, and the color balance adjustment.
But most non-professional features are right here in Elements.
Elements is much less expensive than Photoshop,
and it's designed to be simpler to learn and to use.
For example, in Elements, we have the Quick Edit and the Guided Edit
that I told you about a moment ago, and you won't find anything like that in Photoshop.
And some of the more advanced features in Elements, like curves or color management,
are presented in Elements in a more simplified manner than they are in Photoshop.
Now that we've taken a quick look at the Organizer and the Editor,
both of which we're going to review in much more detail in other movies,
let's go back to the Welcome screen.
The way to get back to the Welcome screen from either the Editor
or the Organizer work space is over here on the top left by clicking the icon of the house.
The Welcome screen is the first screen that you're always going to see
when you launch Elements.
Unlike in previous versions of this program, you can't dismiss
or skip over the Welcome screen, and there's a reason for that.
Adobe has developed a new online service called photoshop.com
that extends Elements so that you can do things like back up your photos online
or share your photos online, or view fresh, inspirational tutorials online.
And the reason you can't dismiss the Welcome screen
is that Adobe wants you to sign into photoshop.com
every time you launch Elements so that you can take advantage of these features.
We're going to learn more about photoshop.com in future movies too,
but I wanted you to understand why you have to deal with the Welcome screen
every time you launch the program in Elements 7.
Now that you know the kinds of things that you can do in Elements 7
and where in the program to go to do them,
let's jump into the rest of the course so that we can learn to organize,
edit, create photo projects, and share our photos in Elements 7.
[Watch Photoshop Elements 7 Essential Training at www.lynda.com/pse7]
