Understanding the tools

SS
Posted By
Srivaths_Sankaran
Jan 4, 2004
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101
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3
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Closed
I am a complete novice with Elements and am making headway with my digital images by reading the manual, Mikkel Aaland’s book and this forum. However a lot of the work is mainly a trial-and-error exercise and shots in the dark. The reason for this is that I don’t really understand what the various tools are doing.

For example, what is feathering, what is dodging, how about burning? When does one use the sponge tool and when to smudge. Then there is red-eye elimination however, it doesn’t always work. What is the histogram showing? What the axes? What are tonal values, midtones…

Is there any resource that will provide the background information that I am seeking? Mikkel Aaland’s book is great at taking an existing image and correcting it. In most cases it doesn’t explain the reason for using a tool therefore unless you have exactly the same situation, you don’t know if the described technique is appropriate.

I would much appreciate any pointers.

Sri

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Chuck_Snyder
Jan 4, 2004
Sri, have you been to Jay Arraich’s website and read the section on Elements basics? It’s a good starting point for browsing. Here’s the link:

http://arraich.com/elements/pse_basics1.htm

Also, Philip Andrews’ book "Adobe Photoshop Elements, A visual introduction to digital imaging" is a novice-oriented book with much discussion on specific tools and techniques.

Chuck
SB
Stu_Bloom
Jan 4, 2004
What is the histogram showing?

"Possibly the most useful tool available in digital photography is the histogram."

That’s a quote from:

< http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-se ries/understanding-histograms.shtml>
LG
Lorace_Graham
Jan 4, 2004
I understand just what you’re going through, Sri. And the link that Chuck gave you is wonderful and helped me a lot.

But truly it is trial and error and trying and erroring again. After awhile, you’ll be surprised how much you have learned, but it takes patience.

Another link that helped me is this one:

<http://www.elated.com/tutorials/graphics/photoshop/>

So, good luck to you. It’s kind of fun to get a picture in and try all the tools and see what happens. ha ha.

Lorace

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