Page #9 (Part I: Organizing Items in the Catalog)

Chapter 1. Start Here

You might not have discovered it yet, but Photoshop Elements is actually two programs designed to work seamlessly together: the Editor and the Organizer. You use the Editor to make changes to digital images, such as brightening and sharpening them. Use the Organizer to catalog your images so that you can quickly locate and edit, print, or email them when needed.

KEY TERMS

Editor The portion of Photoshop Elements you use to make changes to images.

Organizer The portion of Photoshop Elements you use to categorize your vast collection of graphic images. This portion is essentially the program Photoshop Album 3.0 and is included only with the Windows version of Photoshop Elements.

Graphics editor An application that allows you to edit your digital images.

Given the recent advancements in the field of digital photography, you might be surprised how relatively easy it is to take a bad picture. Even when your digital camera is taking pictures in Automatic mode, it might not properly compensate for less-than-favorable lighting conditions, unexpected movement of your subject matter, and poor composition. Luckily, in the digital world of photography, you can correct most mistakes with the help of a graphics editor such as the Photoshop Elements Editor.

Perhaps you don't use a digital camera; the quality of film photography is often far superior to that of digital images. Unfortunately, when you scan a photo print into a digital file, you often lose the qualities that made the original print superior in the first placeits sharpness, depth of tone, and color. Again, with the aid of graphic editors such as the Photoshop Elements Editor, you can restore the beauty your prints might have lost in translation. In this chapter, you'll learn everything you need to know about working with digital images, including how to use the Organizer and the Editor to categorize and manipulate them.