Last updated 10/04/2003

The Photoshop Elements Book for Digital Photographers

The Photoshop Elements Book for Digital Photographers
Author: Scott Colby .... Publisher: New Riders
258 pages with digial images on the Internet .... $29.99

Learn how professional photographers do it.

I have thrown away a lot of photographs of scenes I would have liked to saved to remember but they were to badly under or over exposed. One of the first things I tried from The Photoshop Elements Book for Digital Photographers was to correct the exposure of a picture taken at an NVMUG meeting.

Not many people would save a picture that is as underexposed as this.

This first time I read how to do it in The Photoshop Elements Book for Digital Photographers, it took less than a minute to change that picture into this.

It was that easy!

It did not turn this picture into a work of art, but if had been the only photo record of the the event, the magic method changed it into a record worth keeping.

Later the book explained two ways to save a picture where a fill in flash should have been used.

I had taken other successful photos on top of the tower on Bald Mountain without flash, but since then the North East Kingdom Green Mountain Club had built a roof. This photo of Clem in the shade of the roof with the brightly lit scenery in the background definitely needed a fill flash.

Photoshop Elements 2 has an almost instant way to apply a fill flash effect using Enhance/Quick Fix/Fill Flash. The instant fix is often good enough, specially if you use the Saturation slider to compensate for the fill flash fading the lighter areas. This method is described in the book. This method, which I had used before, produced a useable picture, but the background color was still fadded.

The second method in The Photoshop Elements Book for Digital Photographers must take professional photographers a minute or two longer. It took me a feww tries and a bit longer to learn to use the fill flash brush so the result seemed right. Only the areas you paint with the fill flash brush are affected, so there was no background fading. This was a definite improvement.

Then I decided there might be a slight color cast because of the shade from the roof. So I followed the instructions in the book for correcting the color. The highlights were not affected, but the middle tones in the background were improved. The result was a picture that I can feel good when I give it to Clem.

By simply following the steps in this book, any photographer with a digital camera and PhotoShop Elements 2 can improve his or her photographic results. Just as photo processing is good training for improving picture taking with a traditional camera, experience with The Photoshop Elements Book for Digital Photographers will be good training for digital photographers. And, digital photographer training is limited only by time, not by the cost of film.

Scott Kelby began The Photoshop Elements Book for Digital Photographers with ways to use Elements 2 to manage your photographs, and safely store all your pictures. The book includes ways to improve portraits and the appearance of customers, a lot of fancy photographer stuff, and photographic restoration. The book ends with ways to present your photographs so they are appreciated by more people.

The original photographs Scott Kelby uses in the book are available online so you can compare your practice with the professional results - if you can wait before practicing on your own pictures. The illustrations in the book are good, the text is sometimes humorous and generally clear and to the point. He even gives specific settings to use where most manual would leave you guessing.

I saw The Photoshop Elements Book for Digital Photographers. I bought it. I showed it to another digital photographer, and he is ordering it. I am glad I bought it, and I believe you will be when you buy it.

For more information, or to order The The Photoshop Elements Book for Digital Photographers goto
http://www.newriders.com