Hints and Tips for PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS

This page provides hints and tips for the use of Photoshop Elements software. Most tips will also work in Photoshop.

They are not in any particular order. New tips will be added to the end of the list in each sub-section.

The success of this service will depend upon the willingness of club members to contribute their ideas.

If you have a hint or tip that you would like to share please email it to the webmaster.

The Organizer (or PhotoBrowser) in Photoshop Elements performs essentially the same function as Adobe Bridge does for Photoshop. It allows you to import, open, tag, catalog and retrieve raw files. You can also open raw files in Camera Raw directly from the Organizer.

If you are expecting to see your brush cursor as a circle but all you see is crosshairs - check that the Caps Lock is not on.

The RAW files from different cameras are not all the same. If Elements will not open the RAW files from a particular camera it may be that you do not have the latest version of Adobe Camera Raw installed. Go to www.adobe.com and find the downloads section. Locate the Adobe Camera Raw updates. If there is a later version than the version you have installed, download it and install it. Make sure you follow the instructions from the download page - exactly.

If you want the selections made with the Crop tool to be totally flexible you have to make sure there is nothing typed in the Width or Height boxes of the Crop tool options. If there is, click on the Cleare button.

All new documents, including images that you open for the first time in Elements, will have the Backgroud layer locked. There will be a small padlock symbol next to the layer name and there will be certain things you cannot do with the layer (such as move it with the Move tool). To unlock the layer so that it will behave like a "normal" layer just double click on the layer name and when the dialogue opens give the layer a new name (or just click OK to accept the default name).

The area in the document window that surrounds your image is usually grey. You can change it to any colour you like. Just set the foreground colour to the colour you want for the area outside the image, then select the Paintbucket tool and Shift-click anywhere on the area surrouding the image.

If you open two images, you can use the Move tool to drag one image onto the top of the other image so that you have a single document with the two images in separate layers. If you hold down the Shift key while you drag and drop then the second image will be centred on the target document (even if the images are different sizes. Once the two images are in the same document you can combine them in various creative ways.

If you make a selection and then try to make an adjustment or apply a filter you wil sometimes get the message "Could not complete .... because no pixels were selected". If this happens, check the Layers palette. You probably have not selected the correct layer (the one that contains the content that you are trying to change).

Have a look under the Gradient tool in the toolbox. Click and hold on the gradient tool and both the Gradient and Paintbucket icons will appear. This happens with any tool that has a small triangle in the bottom right hand corner of its icon in the toolbox.

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This page last updated 12th July 2008 (RK)