Photoshop Elements 12: The Missing Manual

Chapter 8. Elements for Digital Photographers

If you’re a fairly serious digital photographer, you’ll be delighted to know that Adobe hasn’t just loaded Elements with easy-to-use features. The program also includes a collection of pretty advanced tools pulled straight from the full-featured Photoshop.

Number one on the list is the Adobe Camera Raw Converter, which lets you convert and edit raw files—a format some cameras use to give you maximum editing control. In this chapter, you’ll learn lots more about the raw format and why you may (or may not) want to use it. But don’t skip to the next chapter if your camera only shoots JPEGs: You can use the Raw Converter to edit JPEG and TIFF images, too, which can come in really handy, as you’ll see shortly. In Elements 12, Adobe has made it especially easy to work with JPEGS and other image formats in the Raw Converter, as explained on Adjusting Sharpness and Reducing Noise.

Note

Whereas JPEG and TIFF are acronyms for technical photographic terms, the word “raw”—which you may occasionally see in all caps (RAW)—actually refers to the pristine, unprocessed quality of these files.

This chapter also explains Exposure Merge, which lets you combine different versions of a photo to create a single image with a higher dynamic range (a wider range of correctly exposed areas) than you can get from a single shot. You’ll also get to know the Photo Filter command, which helps adjust colors by replicating the old-school effect of placing filters over camera ...