Photoshop Elements

This week's tutorial is the direct result of the wonderful forums and user galleries over at ElementsVillage. The place is chock full of digital photographers, scrapbookers, and creative types of all kinds who just love sharing their work (I'd be hard-pressed to find a friendlier group of complete strangers). The owners of the site also put out a wonderfully informative newsletter called Elements Techniques. If you haven't subscribed yet, just do it.

I just love Photoshop Elements and the new version 6 is a galactic value for the money. One of my favorite new features is a filter that was snatched from big brother Photoshop called Correct Camera Distortion (though over there it's called Lens Correction and it's hiding in the Distort filter category). Oh sure this filter has the power to correct edge vignetting from lower quality lenses but that's not what we're going to use it for. Oh no. I've got something much more creative in mind.

Being the fragile, carbon-based bags of water that we are, most of us have felt like we were going to to pieces at one time or another. Although, have you ever tried to break a photo into pieces? I'm speaking digitally of course. Turns out, both Photoshop and Elements have a brush that can do just that.

You know, photographers spend an enormous amount of time tweaking and adjusting their photos so they look all sparkly and new. So this week I thought we'd chat about making a new photo look really old. Using a few well- placed filters in Elements, you can take a new photo and make it look vintage and antique. Below lie three tips to take your photos from new to old in minutes.

NOTE:Click here to see the Photoshop version of this tutorial.

Not much has gone on in the way of travel since I got back from San Francisco for Macworld Expo. That being said, my husband and I did drive to Long Island, NY this past Friday to shoot the Fire Island Lighthouse at dawn the following morning.

However, going out specifically for a photo shoot is a rather new experience for us, and this one taught me several things:

I don't know if folks are preparing for Spring Fever or what, but lately I've gotten a several emails asking how to change the color of cabinets, shutters, and walls. Maybe people are just getting stir crazy from being cooped up in the house this winter.

Lest you think the Feather option is just about romance, let's use it in a graphic design scenario. For example, let's say we're creating a colorful ad for visiting Vermont in the fall. However, after placing text atop the leaf photo, the image looks a little too busy. What can we do? We can use the Feather option in conjunction with a rectangular selection to tone down that particular area of the photo, so the text can be read more easily.

Few tools are as feminine as the Feather option, and I mean that in the most wonderful of ways. For nestled snugly within the Selection menu, it has the power to make all things soft. Well, that is, all selections. No matter which selection tool you choose, the Feather option instantly softens its sides by the number of pixels you specify. The higher the number, the more gradual the fade, or degree of resulting "softness". The fewer, the more abrupt the edge will be.

Welcome to the fourth installment of our journey through the blending modes founds in both Photoshop and Elements. Though we're still trudging through the second category of modes which all darken the overall image, I think you'll find Linear Burn to be one of the most useful. That is, if you're interested in creating some really trendy, funkified collages. Linear Burn produces an effect that looks a lot like Multiply, though darker, and more saturated (brighter). It's also similar to Color Burn, though the end effect won't be as high contrast.

The fun-factor of creating digital fire is vast. Quite simply, it's a rather stupid amount of fun. Happily, you don't have to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on the full-blown version of Photoshop to get it done. Every filter you need lives right here in Elements. This tutorial will allow you to set your inner pyromaniac free and experiment with this technique on the most unlikely of photos. Heck, this alone could be reason enough to attend your next family reunion.