Lessons
Day 1
1Introduction
16:10 2Intro to Elements Workspace
15:32 3Guided Edit Mode
39:35 4Quick Edit Mode
19:26 5Full Edit Mode: Layers and Masks
1:03:29 6Smart Brushes pt 1
17:30 7Smart Brushes pt 2
31:27Portrait Makeover with Detail Smart Brush
37:39 9Retouching Techniques
39:53 10Recompose Tool
12:27 11Gorgeous Grayscales
36:32Day 2
12Gorgeous Grayscales Continued
55:54 13Quick Color Tints
09:15 14Adding a Vignette
07:05 15Correcting Color and Lighting
49:07 16Fixing a Stubborn Color Cast
15:36 17Lightening Wrinkles and Shadows
18:47 18Selective Softening & Sharpening
25:47 19Placing Text Behind an Image
30:48 20Pushing a Photo Through Text and Other Shapes
41:18 21Blending Images Together
38:31 22Deleting Backgrounds with the Magic Extractor
27:51Lesson Info
Adding a Vignette
So the next thing we might want to do to this photo to make it look really vintage is to add that darkened edge vignette that we added. You can do that with a filter, and it's called the correct camera distortion filter and let me show you what it is, and then we'll talk a little bit more about it. I'm gonna go ahead and go up to the filter menu, which is where the correct camera distortion filter lives and we're gonna give it a click in the world's largest dialog box is gonna hog up our whole screen. And what the style of boxes really for is for removing some of the problems that you can get with shooting with lower quality lenses. Some of the in camera problems if you're shooting with lower quality lenses, sometimes you can get a warping on the edges that looks like a darkened edge. Well, designers were real quick to figure out that images that don't have that darkened edge It's useful sometimes if you want to draw attention to the center of the photos who added back. So they figured...
out how to use the filter to remove it to give it to a photo that doesn't have it. So that's what we're gonna do right now. The first thing I'm gonna do, though, is turn off this Dad gum grid by clicking the show grid check box at the bottoms, we actually can see our image, which arguably is useful. So now we're gonna come over to the right hand quadrant of the style a box, and we're gonna mess with the section called Vignette because that's what that little softened edges called in yet I don't know about y'all, but in Texas we have only mills portrait studios. And I cannot tell you how many times I was trotted toe only mills as a small child to get my fortune taken. And the quintessential older mills effect was this soft, dark and edge. They did it on every single portrait. So you can think of this as the Olin Mills Pritchard Popper. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna grab this vignette slider, and we're going to drag it all the way to the left, and that's it. So here's our before and after I'm gonna toggle this little preview check box often on, So you can see the before and after. So there's before there's after and that meat and it's so easy to dio, it's just unbelievable. Before this filter came along, it was quite the convoluted process. To do this, you could do it, but it, you know, take a little while. So if you want a widen the edge of the Vigna a little bit, you can drag the midpoint slider to the left. He had widening it. You just don't want toe. Widen it so far that it comes into the faces of your subjects because arguably, they're supposed to be the most important thing in the picture when when it's got people in it, so we'll go ahead and say, OK, so now we've got that kind of image going on. So here's what we started with, and here's what we created. It's a whole another emotional reaction. It's a whole different feel and mood and tone of the photo and again elements. Did all the hard work forests of duplicating our image layer so we didn't run the risk of messing up are other layer. So I think on that note, if if we've got some questions from the great Interwebs weaken. Take those. And then we might take a little 10 minute break so I can get up and stretch your legs a little bit. Sounds good. Um, Kristen had just asked Is there a way to 10th of? And yet to match the sepia tone of the image instead of having a black vignette? Great question. So you'll notice here that are Vignette is black. Okay, It's not CPI of the image. So if you wanted to do that, let's do this again. I'll go ahead, throw this layer away because I'm so glad that person asked that question. That's an awesome one. So now we're back to square one. So we're gonna expand our effects panel again because we collapsed it. So I'm gonna double click to the left or should write rather of the tabs go down here to my C Pia thumbnail and give it a quick double click elements duplicates the layer, drains the color and as the color tent. Actually, I messed up. I meant to do the vineyard first. Dad given, that's what we do. Okay, Forget what I just said. We're gonna add a vignette first. So now we're gonna go to the filter menu, choose correct camera distortion, grab our vignette slider, drag it to the left, and let's say we don't want to adjust her mid point on this one, so we'll go ahead and click, OK, now we want to go to our effects panel and double click the edge vignette. And I do like the way that looks. That looks better. So, yeah, you would add the edge vignette first before you went into the effects panel. Yeah, I definitely like the way, the way that looks Any other questions? It's a question from, ah, warming man with regard to the, um can you also just de saturate an image to make it black and white? And are you a fan of that simple process? You can de saturate an image to make it black of light, but you're going to end up with the lowest contrast, most boring black and white you've ever seen in your life, which kind of defeats the point. So you're not a fan, Definitely not a fan. If there was no other way to do it, you know? Yeah, you know, when we first I started getting these image editors and the ability to change the black and white. That was Whoa, that was, you know, fantastic. So but now we've we've grown and we've progressed. And we have fancier ways of doing things and the ability to fine tune them a little bit more. Yes, I'm not a fan of those at all. So there's been quite a few questions about deleting How you if you delete something, how you can get it back, get a step back? Is that Is that something that's possible if we're talking about when we showed off using the erase tool to erase what's on one layer to show what's underneath on the other layer you do have of several levels of undo in photo shop elements, you can step back a whole bunch of times. Easiest way to do that by using the undo button up here at the top. Um, but typically, when you you want to try not to do that because if you if you create a technique, there's no tellin where the mistake will call it a mistake or where you decided to change your mind, you might not be able to get back to the exact point in order to make change. So that's why you really want to stay away from deleting pixels at all. You want to use layer masks because with a layer mask, as you all have seen, uh, concealing and revealing as a matter of just swapping color chips. So it's a very forgiving, nondestructive way Teoh to get that done. And that way you don't have to worry about being ableto under you to that specific point in time when you where the image went astray.
Class Materials
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Ratings and Reviews
a Creativelive Student
Amazing class, Lisa is fun to listen to and she knows her stuff. She made the confusion over so many parts of PSE march in straight lines so I could understand.
John Carter
Because Lesa did such a good job showing off the new features in Elements 9, I just had to buy it. And here I thought I would be happy with Elements 8 forever. Thanks, Lesa.
a Creativelive Student
How refreshing. I have taken Photoshop classes at photographic centers, community colleges, and online but they all left something to be desired. Lesa has designed a class that makes it all work. As a "hands on" learner, I am now be able to use the tools in Elements with confidence. Awesome! Just what I needed.