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Canvas Resizing in Adobe® Photoshop® Elements

in the last little thing that I want to say on the resolution discussion is that it is complicated, so if it doesn't quite yet make sense, then that's perfectly normal. But hopefully that brown sugar analogy really helped you out with that when we were talking about resolution for print. You also need to factor in how far away people are going to be from the actual physical print. So when I said you really shouldn't print anything less than 240 pixels per inch, is that where the pixels will be small enough where you won't see them? What about billboards? They are not printed at pixels branch because they're so far away from the people's eyeballs that are gonna be seeing them. The pixels can be larger, and I think my husband said billboards or permanent around pixels per inch. So those pixels are honking big, but because they're so far away, it's not as big of a deal from. The distance allows you to see it as an image cause your eyes can't see, you know, fine details from that far awa...

y. Same thing with some of the print she may see here. Ah, printed large format in the studio. Sometimes if you're printing large format and your viewers are going to be at a good distance away from the thing, then you can get away with using, uh, lower resolution. So that is it. Okay, let's move on to another thing that you can do with the tools down here in the crop section is you can use the tool called recomposed in what Photoshopped elements will do when used to recomposed. Tool is it's going to crop the image what's really gonna resize the image. But it's gonna resize it intelligently, and it's gonna try. It's best not to harm your subjects. It's gonna analyze the image, and it's gonna look for large areas of blue because it thinks that that's probably a big sky. Large theories of green probably thinks that's a large swath of grass, both of those items in this particular picture being far less important than the people. So let's say you want this particular image to fit inside of ah to fit a certain size, either in print or digitally inside a certain size slot, but you can't necessarily crop it to make it that size. What? You really need to do this. Scoot the people closer together. You can actually do that in elements. I'm gonna go ahead and double click my background layer to make it creditable again. We aren't expert mood. And now let's grab that recomposed tool is right next to the crop tool. When you do, you get some similar options like you do with the crop tool. And that is on aspect ratio. Poppet Mini, where you can say, Hey, I need this final result of this. What I'm about to do to be the size I need to be a five by seven or four by six or what have you. I'm just gonna roll with no restriction because I just want to give you an idea of what this tool does. If we come up here in, grab this handle on either side and I begin to drag inward, watch what elements is doing, see how it's on Lee affecting the unimportant areas. So it has gone into this image and it's analyzed it using content, aware technology. So content aware Hey, I'm aware of the content in your image and it's looking for big patches of color, and it assigns a very low priority rating to those areas, is looking for skin tones and assigns a very high priority to those areas and tries its level best not to mess up those spots. So if you find that you need to recompose the shot after the shot, then you can reach for the recomposed tool, and we can also click and drag the handles from the top downward and bottom up. You just need to drag them slowly enough where you're really watching your subjects and making sure that they're not getting squished and squashed, etcetera in some unknown holier on earthly manner. Now, if we were to do the same thing using content aware scale in Photoshop, it would not do as good of a job. Can you believe it or not? Why? Because Photoshopped does not have this threshold slider right here when you drag this threshold slider all the way that the right you are minimizing any kind of distortion as much as you possible can. Photo Shop doesn't have that. But what Photoshopped does have is the Channels panel, which allows you to create an Alfa Channel so that way you can tell Photoshopped hate. Don't touch these areas. But over here, in elements we don't have that. But what you do have is a super powerful threshold slider. So any time you activate that recomposed tool, I would go ahead, come down here in the options bar and drive that threshold slider all the way. The right that way. You're getting minimum distortion on your subjects. Pretty cool, huh? So, like, if this was a shot of your significant other or a family member and you wanted to print this and fitted into a certain size frame for them the aspect ratio, the photo may be such that it just wouldn't work unless you scooted him together in this tool. Absolutely. Get it done. So let me just press escape to get out of that, and we'll do it one more time. I'll click another tool. So we get rid of that bounding box. So all we did was we open the image. It was a locked a background layer. So I just double clicked it to make it creditable. And then you come down here at the bottom of the tools panel in elements in expert mode. They were still an expert mode. Click the recomposed tool, drag the threshold slider all the way the right and then do whatever you need to to the photo. So for this particular one, if we want to screw these guys closer together, we would just click and drag inward and resize from the bottom up or top down if we wanted Teoh. Now the same kind of tool. This same tool is great for enlarging an image. If you need Teoh, let's say you want to use this image in an ad, but you need a little bit more room for text will just say over here on this right side will grab the crop tool and we'll just give ourselves zero at all. These settings that I use down here earlier will say no restriction that zeroed out the field because anything you change in that options bar down there will stay changed until you change it back. So now it is going to give myself a little bit more canvas space. Using the crop trolling was dragging the handle to the right, so I have a little bit more documents space to work with now. When I switched to the recomposed tool. Drag my threshold slider to the right. Now, when I drag this way, I'm actually increasing the size of the image without messing up my people. Isn't it amazing? It doesn't really great job. And what's even more incredible is that the tool and elements works better than the one in the more expensive program. That's pretty sweet. So if you need toe, create more background out of nothing on either side or top or bottom of your image, reach for this recomposed tool. But do grab the crop tool to give yourself more canvas space first. Or if you know exactly how big you want the you need the image to be. Then you can dial that in using the image menu resize, canvas size, and in that way you can say, Hey, I need my canvas to be X by X and then using this anchor box down here, you can tell elements in what quadrant do you want the original image to end up? Do you want to end up on the left and have the new canvas space on the right? Do you want it at the top? Have the new campus base underneath whatever you want, so that's a really, really slick tool. I use this future all the time when I'm making promotional graphics because I find a stock image that really helps communicate the idea of the class. But then I need this big old chunk of batting around on the right hand side for text for the name of the workshop. So this tool comes in handy for me all the time. So that's recomposed. The next thing I want to show you only have a question. You have a couple questions. I'm just gonna throw it one of my own. I know that you do a lot of micro stock. Do you ever put an original photo from I use it for Microsoft and then recompose it to create area for space that you So that's a really good question. You could. You could do that because one of the best quick tips that I can give you for making money shooting micro stock, aside from buying my class on that, is to include room for text because it's designers who were downloading those things and they need room for text somewhere on the image. So if you compose with rule of thirds, give him some background stays space to put text on. You would have to try that on a on an image. Let's say you didn't plan for that in camera, and you want to affect it here he's and recomposed, or content or scale. You have to really make sure that your pixels didn't start artifact ing, but I bet you could get away with just a little bit. I bet it wouldn't tear up the quality of your image so much that the inspectors would throw it out. The inspectors at stock image services are really persnickety, and they will look at your image pretty much a row of pixels at a time. At 100% they will just really, like with a hot guy. Look at all the pixels in your image to see if you have up sampled it or done something like that. So better to do it in camera. But you might be able get away with a little bit of that. Great, Yeah, so content Aware gives preference to skin tones if you're and then that's really the only thing you could do in elements. If I have an object, and I want to squeeze that in and it can't pick it out. There's nothing I could do. Well, there's no way you can protect a certain areas. Say, Hey, elements don't mess with this area like you can photo shop. But both programs are not only looking for skin tongues, you're looking for areas of fine detail. So it's looking for areas of contrast in fine detail because it figures that who that might be an important thing. But when it encounters big swaths, blue or green, that kind of thing, then they get the lowest priority, and it don't ask me how it knows what it knows. There's some really technical documents on the Internet if you're interested in that sort of thing that explain, the people who came up with this technology debuted back and see us for in Photoshopped content Aware scale. So you can Google content aware, and you'll have all kinds of reading for your evening pleasures on that. Okay, so continuing on down with the tools in the crop section New and Elements 12 is a full on straighten tool. Photoshopped doesn't have that. We have a straighten capability in the crop tool, but Elements has a full on straighten tool. So let's come over here to the bottom of the tools panel. Click to activate the straight until it looks like a level and again it is new and elements 12. And if you come over here to the image, all you have to do is click and drag calls him a little bit. This is a hysterical image. Click and drag across what really should be straight in your image, just like we did over and guided edit mode earlier. And then when you released your mouse button elements is going to rotate the image to that angle, major. So this is the exact same thing we did and guided edit mood early. Now you'll notice I'm gonna go ahead and undo that, my person Commander Control Z. There is an auto fill edges option down here. We saw that also over in guided edit mood. If we give that a click, then we click and drag atop the image. This time we'll drag vertically because you can either drag vertically or horizontally. Doesn't matter. Just drag across what should be straight. So this is the edge of the refrigerator door Now when I release my mouse, but not on Leah's elements going to rotate the image. But it's going to try to fill in the edges. And that's funny that it actually rotated the image. We'll try it this way. With auto feel turned on, see how good of a job it does. Let's zoom out and hide our options. Bar did a pretty good job, mainly because we've got a near solid black background. This is a pretty solid color. The only problem area was right here. So that is Randy Future that even Photoshopped does not have the ability to fill in areas of transparency that result from rotating your image on the canvas. So that is the straight until on that is new in elements 12. Now the other cool thing that I want to show you, which is kind of related to the crop tool, least a bounding box Anyway, we'll end up cropping. The image is a quick, slim affect, and I know a very high end fashion photographer that does this as a matter of course. On every single image he processes. That photographer will rename remain unnamed, so I'm gonna go ahead and duplicate my image layer by pressing Commander Control J. And you can remember that keyboard shortcut as you're jumping the layer content up onto another layer. And I'm gonna temporarily obviously, the visibility on on the original. Okay, so we've got the layer active that we really want to effect. Now we're going to choose image transform, free transform or press commander controlled t We get those handy re sizing handles, you can probably see where this is going. We're going to come down here to the width dialogue or the Whitfield rather double click it activated or highlight the number type in press returned. Actually, we're gonna turn off constrain proportions because we don't want the highest to change. We only want the with to change. Click the green check mark or press return. Now I'm gonna grab the move, told to scoot him over a little bit so we can appreciate the change. So here's the before and after, and that is also a lot of fun with your favorite beverage on a on evening. We have nothing to do. I'm kidding. So let's take a look at that one more time The super quick slimming effect is to just decrease the week but the width by 5%. So you're in a make a copy of your image. Layer is in case you don't like what happens to and you can either choose image transformed free transform. Or you could activate the move tool. And if you've left that show bounding box handle check box turned on than any time you grab the move till you get a re sizing box around your image. So then we're just gonna come down here to the constrain proportions Check box, turn it off and then we're gonna inter 95 in the width check box and then click the little check mark. And if we turn off the background layer, we can say that we did indeed decrease the width of that image by about 5%. As long as you don't go over 5%. Nobody's enviable. Tell you did this, and it really will slim your subject just a touch, and that you will be the favorite photographer for your entire clients, friends and family, etcetera. And then, of course, now you would need to crop out the trans pair areas of the image. So now we can go grab the caught tool to mount so we can see the whole thing. And then we can just draw a box around the image to get rid of that transparent area. Here we go. Nobody's the wiser. That's your super quick slimming effect. Now what we're gonna do is move along to folder number seven, treating all these wonderful, wonderful exercise files. So now what I want to do is show you a panorama. So this is what we're gonna create. Paste this my favorite beach in Hawaii. And as you can see over here on the right hand side elements, may this image from several different layers Okay, so we've got five images to work with and we're gonna have elements. Stitch them together in the panorama as well as use that content aware fill technology that we just saw in use with the straighten tool to fill in the edges of our panorama so that we don't have to crop it to such a small size to get rid of that transparency do from slightly rotating our images in order for them to stack up and stitched together properly when you are shooting Panos to make sure to use a tripod and will make your life a whole lot easier. So go ahead and close that image. Now let's open up the individual images that we're gonna use. So I've got five of them here for you to play with. So that all the different images Now what we're gonna do is choose in Hance Photo emerge. Panorama Elements has all kinds of neat photo emerged technology. Ah, foot emerge group shot will let you take up to 10 shots and pick portions from each to create the perfect shot. So let's say you've got a shot of people and one of them's not smiling, but they are smiling in this other picture so you could combine. You can pick bits and pieces from up to 10 photos, and elements will combine them into one photo exposure. That would be your high dynamic range. So Elements has a little bit of that, not nearly to the level that Photoshopped does, but you can merge several exposures right here in elements. Seeing cleaner lets you delete objects from the photo, so we'll take a look at a couple of those tomorrow But for right now, we're gonna look at Panorama in this style or box, which is exactly the same as the one you see in photo shop. You can either tell elements to use the open files, and in our case, we have all those files open. Or if you hadn't opened them, you could choose, browse and navigate to where they live on your hard drive. But we had them open, so we just turned on add open files. And as a matter of course, I always has turned on vignette removal in geometric distortion correction. So if you've gotten any kind of an edge vignette from your lens or any distortion from your lens than turning on, those two check boxes will try make elements, try its best to get rid of them. And I always just leave the math over here on the left set to auto because that means elements is going to choose one of these. Depending upon the image is gonna try to pick the method that is gonna work out best for the images that you have. So click. OK, sit back. Have a soup of that frosty beverage. Think about how smart you are for buying Photoshopped elements and all the money saved. Make a phone call. Check your facebook page. Okay, so now at this point, this is what we would end up with. We would have some serious cropping to D because we've got these transparent areas because obviously, Lisa did not use a tripod when she shot this sucker. So if you've got oh, Panorama. Oh, great. Not really what you want way. So this is where the magic happens. Would you like, Oh, kind elements user? Would you like for me to automatically fill in the edges? If you always wanted to fill in edges, go ahead and turn on that check box. But if you want the ability to pick and choose, then don't turn that on and then you say Yes. You keep cruising around on Facebook a little bit, have another sip of that frosty beverage and again enjoy a nice little smug clouds. Didn't right above your head, because look at that. Wow. Is that Poch and champagne? That the beverage? I wish it was coming next Friday evening. It will be in that incredible shop elements. Pretty amazing stuff. So just to trot you threw that one again, we won't actually have it. Do it, but I'll just show you the stuff. How to get there. Either open the images or not, but the magic happens in the enhanced menu. Photo emerge Panorama. If you're working with open files, choose add open files. Leave the math set to auto. Turn on vignette removal and geometric distortion and click OK and then elements is going to stitch together your images. Non destructively is gonna combine them all in one document, twist and turn them around, match him up and then create a new layer out of the stitch version. And then when the dialog box, ask if you want to fill in the edges, go ahead and say yes, it may not always work perfectly, but perhaps you could use the spot healing brush here and there on those edges. If there were some problem areas, maybe you could use the clone stamp tool to fix a few problem areas and get away without having a crop. Your panorama down quite so far, so that's pretty amazing stuff here in fed a shop elements