Photo Restoration With Photoshop Elements

This is a review of Photoshop Elements for anyone interested in dabbling with digital photo restoration, photo repairs or photo enhancement while not spending a fortune on full-blown professional digital editing software. When I was first introduced to Elements while doing a photography course it blew my mind to see what you could do with it and that was Photoshop Elements 2 and was a few years ago. There is now a Photoshop Elements 9. Quite honestly, once you buy the software, from version 5 and beyond, I wouldn’t recommend buying every new version unless you are a serious, must have the latest software geek or are going to do a lot of digital editing. That said though, each version does have extra little bits which tempt you into upgrading, the prices generally come down when its been on the market for a while so try not to buy straight away unless of course you want to and can afford it. Bear in mind that for the later versions of the software you will need windows vista or windows 7 and a decent processor.

There are lots and lots of things you can do in Elements so I will go through a few here. Firstly you can organise thousands of photos in the organiser, add keyword tags to them so that you can find them easily or find them by time and date, the organiser is excellent once you get the hang of using it.

Second, you can of course resize and crop images but lots of digital editing software packages can do that. Many people like the fact that photo restoration and photo repairs can be undertaken once you get the hang of the basic principles, badly damaged photos are very time consuming to repair though and so if you need a professional please visit my website. Photograph enhancement options are numerous, from quick fixes to digital face lifts, slimming people, colour correction, removing unwanted objects, people, portraiture, sharpening. It’s all there once you learn how to use the tools. If you want to be a bit more adventurous you can be creative with Elements and present your work in a professional way, you can add signatures and watermarks. You can turn photos into works of art like watercolours and lots more.

That is Photoshop Elements in a nutshell and I used this software when I was learning digital editing so if you want to give it a go I would highly recommend it. I would also attending workshops or a short course on digital editing through your local colleges or at night school because this will help to give you a grounding in the basics and familiarise yourself with the various tools in the toolbox. If you don’t like the idea of that buy a good book. One of the authors I have read in the past is Scott Kelby. He teaches in a fun and informative way and there are lots of step by step guides in his books. I am in the process of writing a book and also do produce eguides if you are interested. I have also published some free teaching videos on YouTube and on my blog so feel free to take a look at them. The main thing to remember is to have fun with digital editing and be creative with it.

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