Photoshop Elements for the Digital Photographer

Photoshop Elements for the Digital Photographer

Learn how to use Adobe Photoshop Elements to do everything from quick fixes to detailed enhancements that greatly improve the look of your digital images. This course will take you from a novice to an accomplished user.

6 Weeks Access / 24 Course Hrs
  • Details
  • Syllabus
  • Requirements
  • Instructor
  • Reviews
$130.00

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$130.00
Instructor-Moderated

Details

Bring out the best in your photos! In this course, you'll learn how to use Adobe Photoshop Elements to do everything from quick fixes to detailed enhancements that will greatly improve the look of your digital images. Even if you don't have any image-editing experience, this class will turn you into an advanced photo editor.

As you explore the program's many tools and features, you'll gain control of Photoshop Elements and create results that you never imagined possible. You'll master techniques for editing images, fixing flaws, enhancing the final product, creating simple art projects, preparing images for online use, and organizing your images.

Syllabus

Photoshop Elements is an excellent package for photographers to enhance and edit digital images. This lesson will introduce online training, show you how to download the images you'll use in class, and start you off with the very basics of Photoshop Elements. The course will take things one step at a time so that even new users can get comfortable editing and enhancing their digital photos.

This lesson will discuss the many file formats that digital images can take and how you can use them to your best advantage with Photoshop Elements. You'll learn how to save updated originals and copies of your images, as well as how to use Smart Fix to produce fast results. You'll see how to crop with the Rule of Thirds Grid Overlay and rotate images to get just the look you're after, and then practice using the Straighten tool for one-step corrections.

Digital images come in all sizes! This lesson will discuss image resolution, pixels, and recommendations for resizing pictures with excellent results. When you want high-quality prints, you'll see just how to resize them and maintain their quality with Photoshop Elements's sizing options. The lesson will also discuss the different shapes images can take and how you can be sure your prints will fit the frames you choose.

Photoshop Elements gives you lots of options for printing your documents, and you'll learn about all of them in this lesson. You'll find out how to add temporary colorful borders and print images to just the size you want. You'll also practice saving photos for use on websites using Photoshop Elements's Save for Web feature. In addition, you'll take a look at the Organizer and see how to print multiple photos on a page.

Most of the time, photographers have plenty of images to work with, but in some instances you'll want to create a new file as a foundation for your images. You'll learn how to do that in this lesson. You'll also see how to use Elements's tabbed windowing for quick access to your open images. From there, you'll add color and then move a photo onto your background. You'll discover how to use the Layers feature in the process.

Ever wondered how professional photographers can make the colors in some images look out of this world? In this lesson, you'll find out how they do it! You'll work with color adjustments in your images, including hue and saturation. You'll then create black-and-white images from color images using Elements's Black and White Conversion feature and pick individual colors to replace with others. You'll also learn how to make quick changes with these tools and discover a tool that can help adjust skin tones quickly.

Light is the essence of photography, but it's not always cooperative. This lesson will discuss ways to enhance and even create better lighting after you've taken an image. You'll see how to use Brightness and Contrast to improve your images, and learn some techniques for adjusting shadows and highlights. You'll also have a chance to work with the histogram, Levels, and Color Curves—all excellent tools for correcting lighting and color tones. Through all this, you'll see how Elements keeps track of your changes and lets you go back through them if you want to undo something.

In this lesson, you'll take a look at how Organizer works to keep track of your images. You'll see how to sort your pictures, add tags, and collect them in albums for use in projects like scrapbook pages and greeting cards.

In your creative projects, you'll often want to pair photos with text. Photoshop Elements gives you plenty of text tools, and in this lesson, you'll explore those and add text to your images. You'll see how Photoshop Elements uses layers with text, and you'll get tips on how to master the Layers panel. You'll also begin your study of the powerful selection tools, including the color-based Magic Wand tool and the flexible Lasso tool. With these, you'll discover the power of Feathering selections and copying selections within an image.

As you continue your study of selection tools, you'll learn how to create a silhouette image using the Quick Selection tool. You'll also practice using any of the selection tools in a reverse mode for tricky selections. You'll see how the Marquee tools let you select perfect squares and circles for use in framing and highlighting your images and how the new Text on Selection tool works with any shape! You'll also work more with Feathering and see the difference it makes, especially when you want to create a soft, blended background in your image. Finally, the lesson will go over how to add colors with the Gradient tool.

In the last lesson on the selection tools, you'll work with the Selection Brush tool for detailed and exacting work when you need it most. You'll also learn some advanced techniques for using the selection tools together. You'll work extensively with the Add to selection option and preview your work with Mask Mode. You'll have a chance to experiment with some of Photoshop Elements's filters and color options, as well as the settings in the Magnetic Lasso tool. As a final addition to your knowledge in this area, you'll have a chance to explore and work with the Select menu.

As the class draws to a close, you'll find many new tools to put to work and still more to learn. The lesson will discuss the Retouching and Correcting tools, and you'll perfect your skills with the Red Eye Removal tool (including the new Pet Eye option), the Clone Stamp tool, and both the powerful Healing Brushes and the Content-Aware Healing option. You'll learn when to use each tool for the best results. The power of Photoshop Elements will come to life as you use these tools in your final assignments.

Requirements

Prerequisites:

You should feel comfortable acquiring digital images, either with a digital camera, using images scanned onto CDs, or scanning film prints. Basic computer skills, such as using a mouse, creating and accessing folders, and downloading and saving files will be briefly reviewed in this course, but should be familiar to you.

This course uses the Windows version of Photoshop Elements to demonstrate the software. In the vast majority of cases the Mac version is identical or very similar. Windows and Mac keystrokes and menus are included in the course material and any significant differences are noted in the materials.


Requirements:

Hardware Requirements:

  • This course can be taken on either a PC or Mac.

Software Requirements:

  • PC: Windows 10 or later.
  • Mac: macOS 10.14 or later.
  • Browser: The latest version of Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox is preferred. Microsoft Edge and Safari are also compatible.
    Adobe Acrobat Reader or other PDF reader.
  • Adobe Photoshop CC, Adobe Creative Cloud, or any version of Adobe Creative Suite CC that includes the Adobe Photoshop CC or Photoshop only (not included in enrollment). Previous non-subscription versions of Photoshop are not appropriate for the course.
  • Microsoft Word Online.
  • System Requirements: For the current release of Photoshop Elements, see: System requirements | Photoshop Elements.
  • For earlier releases of Photoshop Elements, see: System requirements | Older Versions.
  • Operating System requirements: Photoshop Elements runs on Windows or macOS. See the operating system requirements for your version of Photoshop Elements above.
  • Photoshop Elements must be installed and fully operational before the course begins.

Other:

  • Email capabilities and access to a personal email account.

Instructional Material Requirements:

The instructional materials required for this course are included in enrollment and will be available online.

Instructor

Beverly Richards Schulz

Beverly Richards Schulz is an award-winning photographer and graduate of the New York Institute of Photography. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Legal Studies from UC Berkeley and a master's degree in Adult and Continuing Education. For the past 10 years, Schulz has taught at the University of San Francisco. With more than 15 years teaching experience, she has written over 30 digital photography and digital editing courses. She co-authored the book "Photoshop Elements 14—What's New?".

Eric Johnson

Eric Johnson is an experienced digital photographer and editor. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics Education (emphases on Computer Science) from Oregon State University and a Master's in Business Administration from Seattle University. Eric has worked for major software and computer corporations, freelance photography and editing services, and has been working with Beverly Schulz teaching ed2go photography courses since 2004. He is her co-author on "Photoshop Elements 14 - What's New?".

Instructor Interaction: The instructor looks forward to interacting with learners in the online moderated discussion area to share their expertise and answer any questions you may have on the course content.

Reviews

I enjoyed this course very much, in large part due to the organization of the subject and the instructor's knowledge and style of teaching. I'll recommend it to others wholeheartedly.

This was an excellent course, which met my needs. The course material will be a useful resource when I get to my own photography work.

I am looking forward to working with my own photos as I continue to put all of this information to work.

This is my fourth class and I always recommend it to people! It's easy to follow with step-by-step instructions. I plan on taking more classes thanks to this wonderful program!

Excellent course! I found it very valuable in learning Photoshop Elements.

Thank you very much for a very positive experience. I am enrolled in the PSE13 II class, and I plan on taking the other courses teach...I purchased Elements from its beginning, but have only used features I could translate from my film and SLR experiences. Now, all kinds of light bulbs are appearing above my head!

I found this course to be extremely well done. It touched upon all of the options that I had questions about in Photoshop Elements 13. I am looking forward to the next course. Thanks.

Instructor-Moderated Course Code: p31