Learning the RopesBack when ships needed favorable winds to get anywhere, new recruits had to learnwhich ropes to pull to carry out the captain’s orders and set sail. This first part of thebook is for novice sailors—people who feel more comfortable if they can begin atthe beginning—while their ship is still safely docked. Just turn the page to sign on fora brief orientation session: You’ll quickly learn the commands, controls, and featuresof the Photoshop Elements work area. For example, you’ll find out what a tool is andhow to select one from the toolbox. After you’ve got your bearings, we can short-hand the steps in later parts and just say, “Click the Crop tool,” and move on.

If you’re feeling adventurous, don’t worry about sailing ahead to another part of thebook. You can do most of the tasks in any order, and you can always come back tothis part if somehow you get turned around.

Welcome aboard, and fear not: You have nothing to lose but your old film camerasand the tiresome wait for your prints to come back from the lab.

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The Photoshop Elements WorkArea

Menu barShortcuts bar\rOptions bar

Toolbox

Title bar Search (for Help) field

Palette well

Palettes

Active image area

Start

Double-click the Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 icon on the Windows Desktopto start the program.

Click the Browse for File button.

Drag the scrollbar until you see the thumbnail (small picture) of the picture you wantto edit.

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Starting Photoshop Elements and Openinga Picture

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EndDouble-click the thumbnail. The picture will open in the active image area.

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Welcome BackClick to clear the Show thisscreen at startup check boxin the lower-left corner, thenselect Exit WelcomeScreen, and you won’t see itagain. If you ever want it back,select Window, Welcomefrom the menu bar.

None of this needs to be compli-cated. In fact, most kinds of touch-ups are sooooo easy, they takejust a click or two. PhotoshopElements has lots of built-insmarts, and you rarely need toknow much more than a few simple steps to get great-lookingresults.

Hide and SeekDon’t see your shots? You eitherdidn’t load them from yourcamera or scanner yet, or youstored them in a different folder.You might need to navigate thefilesystem on your hard drive orCD to find the images youwant.

Double-Click

Click

drag

Double-Click

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Start

5Viewing and Adjusting the Active ImageArea

To clear the work area, click the close box (×) of an open palette.

Close any other open palette.

From the menu bar, select View, Fit on Screen or press Ctrl+0 (zero). The viewof the active image area enlarges to fill the work area.

You can move the active image area around by dragging its title bar.

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Open WindowsYou can have several picturesopen at the same time. Selectone of them for editing (make itactive) by clicking its title bar. (Ifyou can’t see all the title bars,select Window, Images,Cascade to see them all.)

When you have a picture file open for editing, you’ll usually want tomake it as large as possible on the screen. This will give you the clearestoverall view, regardless of the actual image size. Then, you can use theZoom tool (or the View, Zoom In command) to magnify small areas if youneed to work in even finer detail.

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Click

Click

Click

drag