Nowadays most of our photos are digital. Gone are the days of winding film and putting the camera film in an envelope for your local pharmacy or store and waiting an hour for the film to develop. Now we have instant development on screen and on your computer.
There are various photo-editing software’s on the market and finding one that’s easy to use and multi-functional is a daunting task. Personally I am a huge fan of the Adobe Creative Suite and as such use Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Elements is a slightly simpler version of Photoshop and doesn’t include all of the advanced features of PS, but is user friendly for people that are editing holiday snaps and family get togethers.
Features of Photoshop Elements include easy importing of photos from your camera’s memory card or from any folder on your computer. You can even scan multiple photos and elements will separate and store them individually. Photos are easily organized by date and you can regroup them for similar photos for events, or time they were taken. I find this feature especially useful as from Spring to Summer I attend many Art & Wine Festivals and pick up flyers and business cards and can scan them too along with my photos. For advanced editing I can import these into Photoshop and create collages of different wineries including their business copy and my own personal photos from the event.
Facebook is one of the most popular ways to share your photos with family and friends online, Adobe Photoshop Elements allows you to use your Facebook friends list to tag photos even faster and easily add them to your Facebook photo albums.
Advanced features of elements allow you to fix old photographs by blending backgrounds and can make old photos brand new and digital by repairing using the spot healing brush. Other features include contrast, lighting and color enhancing to bring the most out of photos such as nature and flowers, or many other outdoor photos. I am in the habit of carrying my camera everywhere and often take pictures of rare flowers and plants I see and enjoy enhancing the vibrant colors with Photoshop Elements.
Overall Photoshop Elements is a fantastic photo editor for everyone from novices to experts. Its intuitive design allows you to play around and experiment and learn different features. In addition there are many online tutorials and documentation on the Adobe website to help you get the most out of your photos.