Lessons
Lesson Info
Class Introduction
I'm Khara Plicanic, and today, right here, right now, we are talking about Photoshop Elements and I'm gonna give you an intro to Photoshop Elements and all of the amazing things you can do with it. So, let's get started. Elements is a combination of an organizer and an editor. It's actually two separate programs, but they all come under one umbrella and we'll see how that works when we get into the workspace. But just know that when you get when you acquire Elements, you're getting an organizer and an editor. And if you are familiar with software and this industry, and the company that makes all this great stuff, then one way to think of it is that the organizer is sort of akin to Lightroom and the editor is equivalent, of course, to just Photoshop. So where do get all this stuff? Adobe is the maker of all these great, fun tools and you can visit Adobe.com and purchase the software as well as if you are totally new to this, this is your totally first time here, you can download a free ...
trial, and it'll be fully functional for 30 days. So you can give it a try and see what you think. We're gonna have a lot of fun with this. A lot of people get a little confused about like, what's the difference between Photoshop and Photoshop Elements? Why is there a difference? And there is a few differences cost is one of them, they vary in cost, partially that's because of the licensing plan. So as it is currently, while we're filming this, the license for Photoshop Photoshop is something that you subscribe to. So that's an ongoing subscription versus Elements, is something you can pay for and just own, you are just buying the program versus licensing it on an ongoing basis. So that's a little bit of a different setup and that can change the cost a little bit. The other thing is there are some features that are different. Now, you'll notice that I just said different. I am not implying that one is better or different than the other, they're two separate programs, they do a lot of the same stuff in a lot of the same ways and they do a few things differently. And there are some really cool features in Elements that I think Photoshop could benefit from itself, and we'll be talking about that while we make some cool stuff today. Let's take a peek at some of the cool things we're gonna be making. We're gonna be making a couple of double exposures, one or two of those, and combining a couple images into one. I'm gonna show you how to remove an image from the background, and put it into a new background. We are gonna talk about creating a painting just right here, and several different methods and techniques for doing that right here in Elements. And depending on time, we can get into doing some fun things, combining like this giraffe into the window. I just think that's so much fun. And it's really, you're really only limited by your imagination when it comes to this stuff. But first, before we get into actually swapping backgrounds and doing all of those really fun, exciting things, we have to talk about the other side of Elements, which is the organizer. So, back to organizing and editing, we'll be taking a look at the organizer and let's talk just briefly how that works. The organizer works with a catalog system. So just like the library, your local library keeps track of all kinds of books that it has scattered on shelves throughout not only their local library location, but their whole branch system. So different libraries, they've got books spread out through the whole library system, but they know where every single one of them is all the time, and that's how the organizer works. So I'll show you exactly what I mean by that. The organizer, of course, organizes our images, which means it makes it easy to find what we're looking for and it does that in a number of different ways. It does that using keywords. So I'm gonna show you how we can create keywords to label, or tag our images the same way you might tag pictures on Facebook, you can tag images inside the organizer with keywords and make it easy to find them. You can also instantly have your stuff organized by time. This is my personal favorite, because it requires zero effort on my part or your part as long as you're shooting digitally and you have the correct date and time set on your device, then your images are already gonna be instantly organized by time, which is really cool. So maybe that's as much as you even need, and the organizer makes it really easy to find your photos based on that time organization, with like, literally zero effort on your part. So (chuckles) maybe you like that one as much as me. The other things you can use to organize your images are places, so if your images have geolocations built into them, the organizer makes it easy to actually show them on a map and I'll be showing you how that works. And you can also add place tags and location tags after the fact as well, and of course, people. It has a built in face recognition, much like we see on Facebook. And you can actually tag people, or it can auto-recognize people and that makes it really easy to find photos when you're looking for them also. So we'll walk through some things in the organizer, and then we're gonna bounce on over to the editor. Which, I'm gonna give you a little tour of the workspace, and we're gonna talk about the three different sort of layers, I guess, or levels of editing. So the workspace has something called a quick edit, there's a guided edit, and there's the expert edit. We're also gonna be talking about making some selections, working with a little bit about layers, masks, and some other assorted goodies, depending on time. Let's talk about our files. When you get the class, not only do you get a fabulous 90 minutes or hour or so with me, but we're also gonna give you all of these files. So you'll be able to actually follow along and do everything just as I'm doing it right at home for all of the editing files, for all the fun stuff that we do when we remove backgrounds and create those really cool double-exposures, you're gonna get all the files so you can practice with that as well. And before we jump over to the software, I just wanna let you know where you can find me. I'm online at KharaPlicanic.com, you can find me on social media on almost all the major platforms as kplicanic, and I would love to hear from you. I would love to, you know, get a shoutout, say hi, and let me know what you thought and also, I'd love to see your work and see the way that you use Elements to make something fun and exciting.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase