Here is a video demonstartion shows how Photoshop Elements’ Group Shot tool can help you salvage group photos where it was hard to get everyone to take a good picture at the same time.

The tool is easy to use once you see how it is done. By the way, this is just one of the many tools we will be using in the Photoshop Elements 8 Editing Tools class I’ll be teaching at PVNET in January. To find out more about the class and how to register, CLICK HERE.

Here is the link to the Video. You will need the Apple Quicktime Player installed on your computer.

Hello Everyone,

I am excited to announce a new class that I will be teaching in about three weeks for the Palos Verdes on the Net  (PVNET) organization. Since this class will be a basic introduction to digital photography, it may not be of interest to those of you that regularly follow my blog. However, you may have friends that are just beginning the journey into digital photography. I would appreciate it if you would let them know about the class. On the other hand, you may also be interested yourself, as a brief review.  Below is a basic description of the class:

Are you new to digital photography? Did you just get your first digital camera and are wondering what comes next? This class may be just what you are looking for. In the course you will begin by taking a series of pictures of Point Vicente Park and the PV coastline. During the course, you will use Photoshop Elements 8 to upload your pictures to the computer, organize them so they can be quickly found, improve their color and brightness, make a simple slide show and other creations, and finally learn how to share them via email, ordering prints, or uploading them to photo sharing websites.

As you can tell by the description, we cover a lot of ground. However, we do not go nearly as deep into any of the topics as we do in my normal classes. The whole idea is give the student a clear idea of what digital photography is all about. The added nice feature is that those taking the class will use the pictures they take on the first day of class throughout the rest of the course. What’s really cool as that basically stepping outside the class room, there is a great view of Catalina, Point Vicente Park and the Palos Verdes coastline.

Here are some of the details.

Working Title: An Introduction to Digital Photography – The Basics
When: Mondays, beginning November 16th from 10:00 am to 12:00 noon for five weeks
Where: PVNET Annex Computer Technology Center, located at 30940 Hawthorne Blvd., Rancho Palos Verdes, 90275. The Computer Technology Center is located adjacent to the Palos Verdes City Hall.

The cost of the  five week, ten hour course is approximately $50. The computer center has sixteen computers (so the class will probably fill up quickly) and provides an excellent learning environment. One of the features I really am looking forward to using is a program called Insight. With this program, I can beam my computer screen directly to each one of the student’s computer monitors. This makes it much easier for the student to see what I am demonstrating. And as stated in the description above, we will be using PSE 8. However, if you or your friends have earlier versions, don’t worry; they will work fine.

As far as I know this is the first public announcement for this class. The PVNET web site should show it soon with instructions on how to register. Also, look for a flyer inside the Daily Breeze in the next couple of weeks.

To find out more about how to register for the class, as well as an aerial map showing the location of the Annex Computer Technology Center, click here.

This opportunity to teach the class came up unexpectedly a couple of weeks ago, which explains why you may not see any reference to it yet on the PVNET web site. That should change very soon. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email me of comment below. I will keep you posted of any new developments.

Take care,

Don

Are you backing up your pictures and your Photoshop Elements Catalog? Are you using the PSE Backup command, or some other software program to this? Some of my students, especially those that are new to PSE are doing little to protect their images from either a hard disk crash or some kind of virus. Both can strike without warning. If you have never experienced either one of these catastrophes, you will.

I personally use the PSE Backup command to do my backups. This command not only backs up all of my pictures, audio files, and videos, but also the Catalog file that is the heart of PSE’s Organizer. The number of pictures in my catalog is rapidly approaching 23,000. There are a lot of memories contained in those photos. My ability to find any given picture within 1-2 minutes using the Categories, Sub-Categories, and Tags I have assigned them over the years is critical to me. It’s the Catalog file that contains all of this information about my pictures, including the link as to where a given image is stored on my computer.

I have been using the built-in Background command since it became available in PSE 3. It has worked well for me, and on more than one occasion, its companion command Restore prevented an inconvenience from becoming a disaster. This command can also be used when moving your pictures and Catalog to a new computer. I wrote a couple of articles here about a year ago discussing the Backup and Restore commands. Click here.

Many of my students are backing up their pictures and other data using dedicated backup software that may run automatically. In general, this is a very good approach. However, when I ask them if they are backing up their Catalog file with their chosen program, they normally can’t tell me. The Catalog file is absolutely essential if you ever have to recover your pictures and get the Organizer working properly again. This file holds the pointers to the physical location of your pictures, all of the category, sub-category, and tag assignments, as well as all of the other information you or PSE has generated about your pictures.

Most of us, don’t even know where this file is stored. However, it is easy to find this out right from within the program. From the Organizer’s Menu, click on Help > System Info. A screen like the figure below will be displayed. You can print it or copy it to a document. As you can see, it contains a lot of useful information in addition to the location of the Catalog file.

The Catalog file is not a large file. It does not contain your pictures, just the critical information about them. In my case, my Catalog file is only 89 Mb. This is for my catalog that contains almost 23,000 images and takes about 115 Gb of storage space to back up.

So what does all this mean to you? Well, if you are not doing any backups now, you should do one immediately using the built-in Backup Command in PSE. If you are already backing up your computer with other software, verify that the Catalog file is included. If it is not add it to the list of folders/files being backed up, or at least routinely back it separately.

One final suggestion, if you are having trouble with your computer and have it repaired by technician, make sure they are aware of this important file. I have helped several people get PSE running properly again, after they had their PC worked on. Although all of their pictures were recovered, PSE could not find them, because the Catalog file itself was not properly restored.

Until next time,

Don

Yesterday I went to upload some recent pictures from my Canon XTi’s memory card into the Photoshop Elements 7’s Organizer. This is very routine for me having done it hundreds of times.  This time things did not go as expected.

To begin with, I had become lazy and had not emptied my card for some time, although I had previously uploaded all but the most recent batch of photos. In fact, my card had almost 600 images with about 2.5 Gb of its 4 Gb capacity was filed.

As I proceeded to upload the images using File > Get Photos and Videos > From Camera or Card Reader, things went smoothly at first. The memory card was quickly previewed but then I noticed that the actual preview thumbnails were not being generated at some point.  I had seen PSE slow down generating thumbnails in the past, especially if I had a lot of RAW files, but never this bad.

But, I proceeded to the next step, and clicked on the Get Photos button. Nothing happened. PSE 7 had stpped wotking. I had to exit PSE via the Task Manager. I tried multiple times using different card readers with the same results. I began to worry, and was thankful that I had previuosly uploaded the vast majority of the images. But I did not want to lose my recent batch.

At first I thought maybe I was trying to upload too many from the card. Since I had uploaded most of them already, I decided to erase a bunch of them manually from within my camera. I quickly abandoned that approach. I can only do one at a time, or erase them all  and it was going to take a lot of concentration and time to delete them without inadvertently clicking on the Erase All button in my camera.

I then used Windows Explorer to copy the pictures to a folder. I was able to do this. As I was randomly opening the images with Windows Explorer, I clicked on the last picture I had taken, and it had an error that prevented it from being opened. I also noticed, its file size was somewhat smaller.

I put the card back into my camera and deleted that image, the last one I had taken. I put the card back in the reader and proceeded to upload the images using the Get command of PSE 7’s Organizer without any problems. 

I then wondered why that last image was bad. It obviously brought PSE 7 to its knees. Then I remembered. I was shooting RAW,  and my camera takes a few seconds to transfer the RAW image to my memory card. I do not have a high speed memory card. I remember that after shooting the last image, I immediately turned my camera off. I suspect it was in the middle of closing the file and for whatever reason it did not properly complete that operation before shutting down.  

Just to be on the safe side, I reformatted my memory card in my camera rather than just erasing the images. Many people recommend doing this all of the time anyway,  rather than just erasing the images from the card.

So, don’t be in such a hurry to shut your camera off after taking that last shot. That may not have caused the problem, I am not going to take any chances in the future.

I have been reading one of my many Photoshop Elements books. This book is by Mark Galer and is called Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 – Maximum Performance. Unlike many books, this one seems to be aimed towards those readers who have been using Elements for awhile and are ready to take their work to the next level. The book comes with a DVD that includes some very useful plug-ins. Well, enough for my endorsement of the book, for whatever use that is.

One of the many things I’ve learned from the book is a very handy Keyboard shortcut that I’ve never seen before. Galer refers to the shortcut as “Stamp Visible”.

Here is how it works. Before learning this shortcut, after I would adjust the brightness, contrast and color of the overall image using Adjustment Layers and felt I was done with these types of corrections, I would flatten the image. I would then move on to other enhancements such as cloning, fixing blemishes etc.  I did this so that my layer stack would not get to complex. I also teach my beginning students this basic approach for the same reason.

This is where the Stamp Visible comes in. After and whenever you have applied several adjustment or other layers to an image and you are thinking of flattening it, create a layer that combines all of your layers to that point on a single layer instead. The shortcut to do this is Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E. This composite layer is then created that combines all of the layers onto a single layer. If the this new layer does not appear on the top of the stack (because you did not have the top layer highlighted), just drag it there. You now can begin working on that layer to do additional editing. If you want to delete it later for some reason, your adjustment layers are still available.

Here is a screen shot That shows the Stamp Visible layer on top of the layer stack.

 Note, I did rename the layer to Stamp Visible – Composite. When it was created it was named Layer 1.

Try this shortcut out. Getting to all of those keys is a good execise for testing the dexterity of your fingers.

Don

The Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) is the plug-in within Photoshop Elements (and Photoshop for that matter)  that allows PSE to open and edit camera raw files.  

As new cameras are introduced they often change their raw file format or other inner workings that affect the raw image file written to the memory card. Adobe updates the ACR to accomodate the change. I normally did not worry about making sure I had the latest ACR, as long as my camera raw files could be opened and edited with whatever version of ACR I had installed. However, on occasion Adobe makes improvements to the ACR that are incorporated into the latest version that add to its capabilities.  So you need to occasionally check with the Adobe web site to see if a new version is available.  Here is the link  to the ACR Download page. Here is the link to the Readme file that describes how to download and install the new ACR.

The latest version is ACR 5.3, which was just released. Even if you have recently purchased PSE 7, you may not have this latest version. For example, I believe my PSE 7 (October vintage) came with ACR 5.1, but I am not certain of that. I do know I have updated it at least twice  since then. Also, unlike CS4, clicking on Help and then Updates apparently does not let you know about the new update. When I did this, it said my PSE 7 had all of the latest updates. To find out the version of ACR currently installed, open a image in the ACR and look in the upper left hand corner where you will see the version number.

 Also, this latest update is  compatible with with PSE 6, and Premiere Elements 4.0 and 7.0. However, you have to copy the file itself into the appropriate folders in each one of these programs. This is all explained in the Readme file. If you recently bought a new camera, you definitely want to upgrade to the latest version. Otherwise you may not be able to read the raw files from your new camera.

The picture above is a recent panorama  comprised of four images of the downtown Los Angeles taken from Kenneth Hahn Recreational Area. I need to return there after a rain. I suspect the view will be even more spectacular.

 Until next time,

Don

For those of you who may not know this, I teach digital photography classes in the South Bay area of Los Angeles.  I now know what my teaching schedule will be for the spring term. I teach at two different adult education schools. Course descriptions and schedules for both schools have now been posted on my web site.

To see the classes I will be teaching at the South Bay Adult School in Redondo Beach this spring, click here.

For the classes I will be teaching at the Torrance Griffith Adult Center, click here.

Registration has not started at either school yet, but should be open in a couple of weeks or so. Contact the school for more information.

Until next time,

Don

Photoshop Elements has an easy to use Slide Show Editor that is really quite powerful. One of its features is the ability to apply pans and zooms to your still images, commonly called the Ken Burns Effect. Many other slide show programs also include this feature, for example Photo Story 3 by Microsoft. However, I find PSE’s very easy to use, so it is my personal choice for making slide shows.

One of the prime ways I use to share the pictures I take is to make a slide show, and then burn it to a DVD for viewing on a widescreen high definition television. PSE cannot actually burn the DVD, but it can produce a video file that can then be imported to a typical video editing program for the burning of the DVD. If you also have Premiere Elements, there is even a more direct way to produce the DVD that is compatible with players attached to your TV.

However, what has been somewhat frustrating, is PSE, even PSE 7, does not directly support producing borderless wide screen or 16:9 aspect ratio .wmv files. It does support producing DVD quality .wmv for standard 4:3 aspect ratio DVDs. Questions on how to do this with PSE frequently come up on user forums. The following link is to a recent discussion on this topic.

http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?128@@.59b73505

After participating in some of these discussions and trying various experiments with PSE 7, I have come up with a series of steps that at least work for me for making a .wmv file in the Slide Show Editor of PSE which can then be imported to a video editing program for burning the DVD which will be borderless when viewed on a high definition widescreen TV.  True there is certain level of loss quality that results from making the intermediate .wmv file, but frankly I can’t see it, the final results look great on my wide screen TV.

Ok, with that as a background here is what I did.

• Resize/Crop the slide show images to a 16:9 aspect ratio. I used 1920×1080 pixels.

This not only gets the images to the right aspect ratio, but it tremendously reduces the image file size which will make rendering the slide show movie a lot easier and quicker. You do not need anything near your camera’s image resolution to produce a high quality DVD.

• Put a checkmark in the Landscape option in the Slide Show Preferences dialog.

When you start a new slide show the Slide Show Preferences dialog pops up. See the figure below. As it turned out, this was the key to producing a borderless DVD.

•  After you have designed your slide show, and are ready to share/produce or output it, select Output > Send to TV > Widescreen High Definition (720p) to produce the .wmv file.

This is not the recommended output format for producing DVDs as described in the slide show editor.

• Open Premiere Elements (PRE) or another DVD burning program such as those from Nero or Roxio etc, and import the .wmv video file from the above step.
•  In PRE Burn the DVD using the WS 720p preset. Similar profiles are presumably in other DVD burning programs.

 The advantage of the above approach is all of the transitions, pan/zoom effects etc that were easily generated in the PSE  Slide Show Editor are maintained.

 I still have some details to work out regarding things like how to handle portrait images, what if the images are not cropped to a 16:9 aspect ratio, and how best to handle extreme zooms.  But at least the above process results in a very good quality DVD that plays on my widescreen TV without the borders.

Until next time.

As expected, Adobe has announced Photoshop Elements 7. I say as expected, because for the last few cycles, they announce an upgrade in early September with availability in October or so. I have been beta testing PSE 7 since last February. I could tell by the beta testing activity that the testing cycle was nearing completion. I have also been participating on the beta test team for Premiere Elements 7, Adobe’s consumer video editing program, for the past several months. Adobe has chosen to skip the version numbers 5 & 6 for Premiere Elements to avoid the confusion that has bothered consumers. Now, both products will have their versions numbers in sync.

I found out about the announcement from a friend’s email that referenced an article in PC Magazine. There is also an announcement at DPReview.com. Adobe also has a link to Photoshop Elements 7. In addition, to bringing out the new versions of these programs, Adobe has been featuring Photoshop Express Beta for the past several months. When Photoshop Elements 7 hits the stores, Photoshop Express will lose its beta designation and go prime time. One of the new main features of Photoshop Elements 7 will be its tight integration with Photoshop Express. I have been playing with Photoshop Express Beta. Linking it directly to Photoshop Elements should be popular to many users.

In the coming weeks, I will have more to say about all three new offerings from Adobe. I’ll wait until more details come out in the press or am officially released from the non-disclosure agreement I signed.

I can offer this somewhat obvious advice. If you were about to go out and buy PSE 6 or PRE 4, I would wait a bit longer. At the other end of the continuum, if you already have PSE 6 and/or PRE 4, I would not panic. Your programs are not obsolete.

Until next time…