Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac: 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, aimed at beginners. Elements is also brimming with a collection of pretty advanced tools pulled straight from the full-featured Photoshop.

Number one on the list is the famous Adobe Camera RAW Converter, which takes RAW files —a format some cameras use to give you maximum editing control—and lets you convert and edit them in Elements. In this chapter, you’ll learn lots more about what RAW is, and why you may or may not want to use it in your own photography. And the RAW Converter in Elements 6 is just packed with terrific new features, like the ability to work on multiple images at once. Don’t go away if your camera shoots only JPEGs, though. Now you can use the RAW Converter to edit JPEG and TIFF images as well as RAW files. This is a very big deal, as you’ll see shortly.

You’ll also get to know the Photo Filter command, which helps adjust image colors by replicating the old-school effect of placing filters over a camera’s lens. And last but not least, Elements includes some truly useful batch-processing tools, including features to help rename files, perform format conversions, and even apply basic retouching to multiple photos.

The RAW Converter

Probably the most useful thing Adobe has done for photography buffs in Elements is include the Adobe Camera RAW Converter. For many people, this feature ...