Photoshop Elements 10 for the Digital Photographer II

About This Course

Bring out the best in your images! If you have a basic working knowledge of Adobe's Photoshop Elements 10, these lessons will help you take your skills to the next level. Gain ability and confidence as you master the features of this award-winning software, specifically designed for photo enthusiasts.

Packed with hands-on activities and step-by-step instructions, this course will make you an accomplished user in just a few weeks. You'll be amazed at how effectively you can use artistic filters, layering techniques, and advanced editing tools. Before long you'll be creating collages, turning images into text, and restoring old photos like a pro.

Photoshop Elements 10 gives you room to grow while allowing you to create exciting effects right from the beginning. Because it offers you more features and tools than you'll find in simpler programs, it broadens the options available to you as an amateur photographer. With the techniques you'll learn here, you'll be able to edit your photos with ease, and you'll have the power to transform any shot from "okay" to "wow"!

About The Instructor

This course includes a knowledgeable and caring instructor who will guide you through your lessons, facilitate discussions, and answer your questions. The instructor for this course will be Beverly Schulz.

Beverly Schulz is a freelance photographer and a graduate of the New York Institute of Photography's Professional Photographer's program. She teaches a number of classes in digital photography and has more than 25 years of classroom instruction experience. Her writing and photography have been published in a number of magazines. She has traveled extensively and participated in onsite photography workshops as well as independent photo quests. In addition to teaching and photographic work, she provides consulting services for digital photographers and clients.

Syllabus

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

Week 1

Wednesday - Lesson 01

Photoshop Elements 10 is an excellent program for photographers to enhance and edit digital images, and in this class, we'll move into the advanced features for photographers. In the first lesson, we'll dive into a workflow for digital editing. Photographers often wonder where to start when working with an image, so today, you'll get a good idea of the options available and a sequence to follow.

Friday - Lesson 02

In this lesson, we'll look at tools you can use to perfect portraits. Although you can use these tools to fine-tune any type of image, you'll find them especially helpful with the detail work associated with portraiture. You'll see how to smooth away wrinkles with the Surface Blur filter, remove red eye, and even turn gray hair brown! If only it were so easy in real life . . .

Week 2

Wednesday - Lesson 03

Distortion. It's not something you'd think would be desirable in photography, but with the options in Elements, you'll discover how distortion can help you work wonders! In this lesson, you'll see how to slim a waistline, trim loose edges, and accentuate the positive with distortion tools. You'll also find out how to correct an image by combining parts of two different photos, and you'll have a chance to get creative with the many brushes available in Elements.

Friday - Lesson 04

By this point, you'll be familiar with lots of the options Photoshop Elements provides for editing images. In this lesson, we'll turn to the task of restoring old and damaged photographs. You'll see how to turn back the effects of time as well as how to add hints of color to black-and-white images.

Week 3

Wednesday - Lesson 05

Many computer programs allow you to include clip art in your documents. But did you know that with Photoshop Elements, you can make your own? In today's lesson, you'll see how to extract small portions of a photograph without any surrounding border and how to use them in other images and documents. You'll also find some great ways to merge text and imagery to create outstanding photographic impressions.

Friday - Lesson 06

Editing your images isn't all about painstaking details and procedures. It can be a lot of fun, too! Photoshop Elements offers countless special effects, filters, and styles that you can use to show off your images. In this lesson, we'll explore how to add frames, backgrounds, clip art, and shapes to expand your creativity. You'll see how to sharpen and blur photos as well as how to salvage an image with these miraculous fixes!

Week 4

Wednesday - Lesson 07

Working with layers is one of the most powerful aspects of Photoshop Elements. In this lesson and the next, you'll see how layers work from beginning to end. You'll build a quickly modifiable business card and a collage as you learn how to use Adjustment and Fill layers to your advantage. You'll also put the Smart Brush tools to work with quick edits that leave you with stunning images.

Friday - Lesson 08

As we continue our discussion of layers in this lesson, you'll see how to add patterns, blend layers with colors and effects, and group them for great framing options using Elements tabbed windowing feature. Photoshop Elements with layers is like supercharging a race car—and you'll be in the driver's seat. You'll also have a chance to work with Photoshop Elements' 10 new features, Text on Shape and Text on Custom Path—it just gets better and better!

Week 5

Wednesday - Lesson 09

So far, we've done a lot with still photos, but in this lesson, we'll look at moving pictures. You'll see how to create an animated presentation from a sequence of images, and you'll have a chance to try out Photoshop Elements Flipbooks. And if that isn't enough, you'll also see how to create dazzling slide shows with special effects, text, and music to showcase your images.

Friday - Lesson 10

Having looked at how to create moving pictures, you'll see how to capture a frame from a video or movie clip in this lesson. We'll also discuss how to enlarge any image, correct vignettes, and create colored borders of many sizes and shapes around your work. Your friends and family will be impressed by the professional-looking enlargements you create!

Week 6

Wednesday - Lesson 11

Panoramics are a beautiful way to show off wide scenic shots. But did you know that you don't need a special camera or lens to get these shots? Today you'll see how the Photomerge feature in Elements helps you blend several photos to provide seamless panoramic imagery, as well as other Photomerge options. We'll also look at some quick options for resizing and watermarking groups of photos all at once, including the Elements Recompose tool—an exciting feature with fast and easy results.

Friday - Lesson 12

Our last lesson will fill you in on a few remaining tools, like the Cookie Cutter tool and the Shape tools, and you'll see how to use both to create more variations of clip art. You'll also work with a raw file and discover the benefits of working with these large, uncompressed files. You'll find yourself with lots of knowledge and hours of practice under your belt as you finish up this class about the advanced features of Photoshop Elements.

Requirements

Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 for Windows/Mac (software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins); Windows 7 / Vista / XP, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard; Internet access; email; and the Internet Explorer or Netscape or Firefox Web browser.

Note: This course is written for the Windows version of the software. Mac students are welcome, but will need to make standard Windows/Mac keystroke conversions—many of which are included in the course material. Teaching staff has Mac software and equipment available and can help troubleshoot with Mac students to complete course material if necessary.