The tools in the Quick Fix window are pretty easy to use. You can try one or all of them—it's up to you. And whenever you're happy with how your photo looks, you can leave Quick Fix and go back to the Full Edit window or the Organizer.
If you want to rotate your photo, click either of the Rotate buttons below the image preview area. (See Rotating and Flipping Options for more about rotating photos.)
Tip
If you click the Reset button just above your image, you'll return your photo to the way it looked before you started working in Quick Fix. This button undoes all Quick Fix edits, so don't use it if you want to undo a single action only. For that, just use the regular Undo command: Edit → Undo or Ctrl+Z.
Everyone who's ever taken a flash photo has run into the dreaded problem of red eye —those glowing, demonic pupils that make your little cherub look like someone out of an Anne Rice novel. Red eye is even more of a problem with digital cameras than with film, but luckily, Elements has a simple and terrific Red Eye tool for fixing it. All you need to do is click the red spots with the Red Eye Removal tool, and your problems are solved. This tool works the same whether you use it in Quick Fix or Full Edit.
To use the Quick Fix Red Eye tool:
Open a photo.
Zoom in so you can see where you're clicking.
Use the Zoom tool to magnify the eyes. You can also switch to the Hand tool if you need to drag the photo so that the eyes are front and center.
Activate the Red Eye tool.
Click the Red Eye icon in the toolbox or press Y (this keystroke works in Full Edit, too).
Click the red part of the pupil (see Figure 4-6).
That's it. Just one click should fix it. If a single click doesn't fix the problem, you can press Ctrl+Z to undo it, and then try dragging the Red Eye tool over the pupil. Sometimes one method works better than the other. And as explained in a moment, you can also adjust two settings on the Red Eye tool: Darken Amount and Pupil Size.
Click in the other eye.
Repeat the process on the other eye, and you're done.
Figure 4-6. Zoom in when using the Red Eye tool so you get a good look at the pupils. The eye on the left side of the picture has already been fixed. Don't worry if your photo looks so magnified that it loses definition—just make the red area large enough so you can hit it right in the center. Notice what a good job the Red Eye tool does of keeping the highlights (called catch lights) in the eye that's been treated.
Note
You can also apply the Organizer's Auto Red Eye Fix in either the Quick Fix or Full Edit window. In either window, just press Ctrl+R or go to Enhance → Auto Red Eye Fix. In Full Edit you can also activate the Red Eye tool, and click the Auto button in the Options bar. The only tradeoff to using the Auto Red Eye Fix in the Editor is you don't automatically get a version set (as you do when using the tool from in the Organizer). But you can create a version set when you save your changes, as explained on Saving Your Work.
If you need to adjust how the Red Eye tool works, the Options bar gives you two controls, although 99 percent of the time you can ignore them:
Darken Amount. If the result is too light, increase the percentage in this box.
Pupil Size. Increase or decrease the number here to tell Elements how much area to consider part of a pupil.
Tip
You can also fix red eye right in the Raw converter (Using the Raw Converter) if you're dealing with Raw format photos.
The secret weapon in the Quick Fix window is the Smart Fix command, which automatically adjusts a picture's lighting, color, and contrast, all with one click. You don't have to figure anything out. Elements does it all for you.
You'll find the Smart Fix in the aptly named Smart Fix panel, and it's about as easy to use as hitting the speed dial button on your phone: Click the Auto button, and if the stars are aligned, your picture will immediately look better. (Figure 4-7 gives you a glimpse of its capabilities. If you want to see for yourself how this fix works, download this photo—iris.jpg —from this book's Missing CD page at www.missingmanuals.com.)
Tip
You'll find Auto buttons scattered throughout Elements. The program uses them to make a best-guess attempt to implement whatever change the Auto button is next to (Smart Fix, Levels, Contrast, and so on). It never hurts to at least try clicking these Auto buttons; if you don't like what you see, you can always perform the magical undo: Edit → Undo or Ctrl+Z.
If you're happy with Auto Smart Fix's changes, you can move onto a new photo, or try sharpening your photo a little (see Sharpening) if the focus appears a bit soft. You don't need to do anything to accept the Smart Fix changes. But if you're not thrilled with the results, take a good look at your picture. If you like what Auto Smart Fix did but the effect is too strong or too weak, press Ctrl+Z to undo it, and try playing with the Smart Fix Amount slider instead. Or click the little grid to the left of the slider to try out one of the tool's presets.
The Amount slider does the same thing Auto Smart Fix does, only you control the degree of change. Watch the image as you move the slider to the right. If your computer is slow, there's a certain amount of lag, so go slowly to give it a chance to catch up. If you happen to overdo it, sometimes it's easier to click the Reset button above your image and start again. Use the checkmark and X buttons (which appear next to the Smart Fix label; they look like the ones shown in Figure 4-8) to accept or reject your changes.
Tip
Usually you get better results with a lot of little nudges to the Smart Fix slider than with one big sweeping movement.
Figure 4-7. Top: This photo, taken in the shade, is pretty dark. Bottom: The Auto Smart Fix button improved it significantly with just one click. You might want to use the tools in the Balance section (Using the Color sliders) to really fine-tune the color.
Incidentally, these are the same Smart Fix commands you see in the Editor's Enhance menu: Enhance → Auto Smart Fix (Alt+Ctrl+M), and Enhance → Adjust Smart Fix (Shift+Ctrl+M).
Figure 4-8. When you move a slider in any of the Quick Fix panels, accept and cancel buttons appear in the panel you're using. Clicking the accept (checkmark) button applies the change to your image, while clicking the cancel (X) button undoes the last change you made. If you make several slider adjustments, the cancel button undoes everything you've done since you clicked accept. (Clicking the light bulb icon takes you to the Elements Help Center.)
Sometimes Smart Fix just isn't smart enough to do everything you want, and sometimes it does things you don't want. (It works better on photos that are underexposed than overexposed, for one thing.) Fortunately, you still have several other editing choices, covered in the following sections. If you don't like the effect Smart Fix has had, undo it before making other changes.
Note
Auto Smart Fix is one of the commands you can apply from within the Organizer, so there's no need to launch the Editor at all if you want just this tool. See the box on The Quick Fix Window for more about making fixes from the Organizer.
The Lighting panel lets you make sophisticated adjustments to the brightness and contrast of your photo. Sometimes problems you thought stemmed from exposure or even focus can be fixed with these commands.
If you want to understand how Levels really works, you're in for a long, technical ride. But if you just want to know what it can do for your photos, the short answer is that it adjusts the brightness of your image by redistributing the color information. Levels changes (and hopefully fixes!) both brightness and color at the same time.
If you've never used any photo-editing software before, this may sound rather mysterious, but photo-editing pros will tell you that Levels is one of the most powerful commands for fixing and polishing your pictures. To find out if its magic works for you, click the Auto button next to the word Levels. Figure 4-9 shows what a big difference it can make. Download this photo (ocean.jpg) from the Missing CD page at www.missingmanuals.com if you'd like to try this.
What Levels does is complex. Chapter 7 has loads more details about what's going on behind the scenes and how you can apply this command much more precisely.
The main alternative to Auto Levels in Quick Fix is Auto Contrast. Most people find that their images tend to benefit from one or the other of these options. Contrast adjusts the relative darkness and lightness of your image without changing the color, so if Levels made your colors go all goofy, try adjusting the contrast instead. You activate Contrast the same way you do the Levels tool: just click the Auto button next to its name.
Tip
After you use Auto Contrast, look closely at the edges of the objects in your photo. If your camera's contrast was already high, you may see a halo or a sharp line around the photo's subject. If you do, the contrast is too high and you need to undo Auto Contrast (Ctrl+Z) and try another fix instead.
The Shadows and Highlights tools do an amazing job of bringing out details that are lost in the shadows or in bright areas of your photo. Figure 4-10 shows what a difference these tools can make.
The Shadows and Highlights tools are a collection of three sliders, each of which controls a different aspect of your image:
Lighten Shadows. Nudge the slider to the right, and you'll see details emerge from murky black shadows.
Darken Highlights. Use this slider to dim the brightness of overexposed areas.
Midtone Contrast. After you've adjusted your photo's shadows and highlights, your photo may look flat and not have enough contrast between the dark and light areas. This slider helps you bring a more realistic look back to your photo.
Figure 4-10. Left: This image has highlights that are too bright and shadows that are much too dark. Right: After a little shadows and highlights adjusting, you can see there's plenty of detail there. (Use the color sliders—described next—to get rid of the orange tone.)
Tip
You may think you need only lighten shadows in a photo, but sometimes just a smidgen of Darken Highlights may help, too. Don't be afraid to experiment by using this slider even if you've got a relatively dark photo.
Go easy: Getting overenthusiastic with these sliders can give your photos a washed-out, flat look.
The Color panel lets you—surprise, surprise—play around with the colors in your image. In many cases, if you've been successful with Auto Levels or Auto Contrast, you won't need to do anything here.
Once again, there's another one-click fix available: Auto Color. Actually, in some ways Auto Color should be up in the Lighting section. Like Levels, it simultaneously adjusts color and brightness, but it looks at different information in your photos to decide what to do with them.
When you're first learning to use Quick Fix, you may want to try all three—Auto Levels, Auto Contrast, and Auto Color—to see which generally works best for your photos. Undo between each change and compare your results. Most people find they like one of the three most of the time.
Auto Color may be just the ticket for your photos, but you may also find that it shifts your colors in strange ways. Click it and see what you think. Does your photo look better or worse? If it's worse, just click Reset or press Ctrl+Z to undo it, and go back to Auto Levels or Auto Contrast. If they all make your colors look a little wrong, or if you want to tweak the colors in your photo, move on to the Color sliders, explained next.
If you want to adjust the colors in your photo without changing the brightness, check out the Color sliders. For example, your digital camera may produce colors that don't quite match what you saw when you took the picture; you may have scanned an old print that's faded or discolored; or you may just want to change the colors in a photo for the heck of it. Whatever the case, the sliders below the Auto Color button are for you.
You get two ways to adjust colors here:
Saturation controls the intensity of your image's color. For example, you can turn a color photo to black and white by moving the slider all the way to the left. Move it too far to the right, and everything glows with so much color that it looks radioactive.
Hue changes the color from, say, red to blue or green. If you aren't looking for realism, you can have fun with your photos by really pushing this slider to create funky color changes.
You probably won't use both these sliders on a single photo, but you can if you like. Remember to click the accept checkmark that appears in the Color panel if you want to accept your changes. For fine-tuning your color, you may want to move on to the next panel: Balance. In fact, in many cases you'll only need the Balance sliders.
Photos often have the right amount of saturation, and moving the Hue slider makes everything look pretty funky, but suppose there's something about the color balance that just isn't right. The Balance panel contains two very useful controls for adjusting the overall colors in your image:
Temperature lets you adjust colors from cool (bluish) on the left to warm (orangeish) on the right. Use this slider for things like toning down the warm glow you see in photos taken in tungsten lighting, or just for fine-tuning your color balance.
Tint adjusts the green/magenta balance of your photo, as shown in Figure 4-11.
Figure 4-11. Left: The greenish tint in this photo is a typical example of a common problem caused by many digital cameras. Right: A little adjustment of the Tint slider clears it up in a jiffy. It's not always as obvious as it is here that you need a tint adjustment. If you aren't sure, the sky can be a dead giveaway: Is it robin's egg blue like in the left photo here? If so, tint is what you need.
Note
In previous versions of Elements, these sliders were grouped with the Color sliders, since you'll often use a combination of adjustments from both groups. Chapter 7 has lots more info about how to use the full-blown Editor to really fine-tune your image's colors.
Now that you've finished your other corrections, it's time to sharpen your photo, so move down to the Detail tab. Sharpening gives the effect of better focus by improving the edge contrast of objects in your photo. Most digital-camera photos need some sharpening because the sharpening the camera applies is deliberately conservative. Once again, a Quick Fix Auto button is at your service: Click the Detail panel's Auto button to get things started. Figure 4-12 shows what you can expect.
Figure 4-12. Left: The original image. Like most digital photos, it could stand a little sharpening. Middle: What you get by clicking the Detail panel's Auto button. Right: The results of using the Sharpen slider to get stronger sharpening than Auto Sharpen applies.
The sad truth is that there really isn't any way to actually improve the focus of a photo once it's taken. Software sharpening just increases the contrast where the program perceives edges, so using it first can have strange effects on other editing tools you apply later and on their ability to understand your photo.
If you don't like what Auto Sharpen does (you very well may not), you can undo it (press Ctrl+Z) and try the slider instead. If you thought the Auto button overdid things, go gentle on the slider. Changes vary from photo to photo, but usually Auto's results fall at around the 30 to 40 percent mark on the slider.
Tip
If you see funny halos around the outlines of objects in your photos, or strange flaky spots (making your photo look like it has eczema), those are artifacts from too much sharpening; reduce the Sharpen settings till they go away.
Always look at the actual pixels (View → Actual Pixels) when you sharpen, because that gives you the clearest idea of what you're actually doing to your picture. If you don't like what the button does, undo it, and then try the slider. Zero sharpening is all the way to the left; moving to the right increases the amount of sharpening applied to your photo.
As a general rule, you want to sharpen photos you plan to print more than images for Web use. You can read lots more about sharpening on Sharpening Images.
Note
If you've used photo-editing programs before, you may be interested to know that the Auto Sharpen button applies Adjust Sharpness (Adjust Sharpness) to your photo. The difference is that you don't have any control over the settings, as you would if you applied it from the Enhance menu. But the good news is that if you want it, or if you prefer to use Unsharp Mask (Sharpening Images), you can get this control—even from within Quick Fix. Just go to the Enhance menu and choose the sharpener of your choice.
At this point, all that's left is cropping your photo, if you'd like to reduce its size. Free Rotate Layer tells you everything you need to know about cropping. However, you can also give your photo a bit more punch by using the Touch Up tools explained in the next section.
The bottom section of the Quick Fix toolbox contains four special tools to help improve your photos. You've already learned how to use one of them—the Red Eye Removal tool—earlier in this chapter (Fixing Red Eye). Here's what you can do with the other three:
Whiten Teeth. As you probably guessed from the name, use this tool to make teeth look brighter. What's especially nice is that it doesn't create a fake, overly white look, as shown in Figure 4-13.
Make Dull Skies Blue. It's a common problem with digital cameras: Your exposure for the subject is perfect, but the sky is all washed-out looking. Unfortunately, if your sky is really gray or blown out (white looking), this tool won't help much. It should probably have been called "Make Blue Skies Bluer." It is useful for creating more dramatic skies, though.
Black and White – High Contrast. You're probably wondering what the heck that means. It's Adobe's way of saying, "Transform the area I choose from color to black and white." This tool's a great timesaver when you want to create a photo where only part of the picture is in color. (High Contrast refers to the style of black-and-white conversion this tool uses.)
All three tools work pretty much the same way—just draw a line over the area you want to change, and Elements makes a detailed selection of the area and applies the change for you:
Open a photo and make your other corrections first.
If you're an old hand at using Elements, use the Touch Up tools before sharpening. But if you're a beginner and not comfortable with layers (see Chapter 6), sharpen first. (See the note on Touch-Ups for more about why.)
Click the icon for the tool you want to use.
Hover your cursor over the icons for pop-up tooltips text if you aren't sure which is which.
Draw a line over the area you want to change.
When you click one of the Touch Up tools, your cursor turns to a circle with crosshairs in it. Just drag that over the area you want to change. Elements automatically expands the area to include the entire object it thinks you want. (It works just like the Quick Selection tool, only it also applies the changes to your image. Selecting with a Brush has more about using the Quick Selection tool.) You'll see the marching ants appear (Cropping with the Marquee Tool) around the area Elements is changing.
If Elements included too much or too little, tweak the size of the selected area.
In the Options bar, you'll see three little brush icons. Click the left icon to start another new selection, click the right one and drag over an area you want to remove, or click the middle one and drag to add to the area. You can also just drag to extend your selection, or Alt-drag if Elements covered too much area and you need to remove some of it, without going to the Options bar at all.
Once you're happy with the area covered by the change, you're done.
You can back up by pressing Ctrl+Z to undo your changes step by step. Just keep going to eliminate the change completely if you don't like it. (Clicking the Reset button doesn't undo the Touch Up changes.)
The Touch Up tools can be very helpful, but they work based on the colors in your photo, so they may not always give you exactly the results you want, as you can see in Figure 4-14. If you want to use the Color sliders (Using the Color sliders) to adjust things, you'll need to switch away from the Touch Up tools and use the Selection brush to re-select the area. That's because the sliders aren't available when the Touch Up tools are active.
Note
The Touch Up tools create a layered file. If you understand layers, you can also go back to Full Edit and make changes after the fact, like adjusting the opacity or blend mode of the layer. (See Chapter 6 to learn about layers.) You can always discard your Touch Up changes by discarding the layer they're on. And you can even edit the area affected by the changes by editing the layer mask, as explained on Editing a layer mask, or use the Smart Brush tool (Correcting Part of an Image) in Full Edit. (The one exception is the "Black and White - High Contrast" tool [Touch-Ups]: You can't change the settings for the adjustments it makes. You just see a weird message telling you that your layer was created in the full version of Photoshop, even though you know it wasn't.)
Figure 4-14. Blue Skies can help punch up the sky color in your photos—sometimes. Left: Smog makes the sky in this photo look really dull. Right: One quick drag across the sky with the "Make Dull Skies Blue" tool produces a much more vivid sky—maybe too vivid (and a tad green). Elements used a gradient (see Applying Gradients) to give a more realistic shading to the new sky color.
Also, if there isn't enough color to begin with, the Touch Up tools may not produce any visible result in your photo. Whiten Teeth may not do anything if your subject has super white dentures, and Make Dull Skies Blue may prove to be a dud if your sky is solid gray or completely overexposed.
You may find that after using a Touch Up tool, nothing happens when you try to make other changes to your photo. As mentioned above, after you work with one of the Touch Up tools (except for the Red Eye Removal tool), Elements leaves you with a layered file. That isn't normally a problem, even if you don't know anything about layers, but once in a while you may find nothing happens when you try to make further changes to your photo. In that case, click the Edit tab at the top of the page, and select EDIT Full to go back to Full Edit. Then find the Layers panel. It should be in the Panel bin unless you've removed it. (If you can't find it, go to Window → Layers to bring it back.)
In the Layers panel, look for the word "Background" and click it. That part of the panel should be a lighter or darker gray (depending on your brightness settings—see The Welcome Screen) than the rest of the panel (the area that says Blue Skies, Pearly Whites, or whatever). If it isn't, click it again. Then you can go back to the Quick Fix window (click the Edit tab and choose EDIT Quick), and do whatever you want to your photo. However, the part you used the Touch Up tools on may behave differently from the rest of the photo. If that happens and you haven't closed the photo since using the Touch Up tools, use Undo History (Undo History panel) to back up to before you used the Touch Up tools.
There are no hard-and-fast rules for what order you need to work in when using the Quick Fix tools. As mentioned earlier, Elements lays out the tools in the Panel bin, from top to bottom, in the order that usually makes sense. But you can pick and choose whichever tools you want, depending on what you think your photo needs. If you're the type of person who likes a set plan for fixing photos, here's one order in which to apply the commands:
Rotate your photo (if needed).
Use the buttons below the image preview.
Fix red eye (if needed).
See Fixing Red Eye.
Crop the image.
If you know you want to crop your photo, now's the time. That way, you get rid of any problem areas before they affect other adjustments. For example, say your photo has a lot of overexposed sky that you want to crop out. If you leave it in, that area may skew the effects of the Lighting and Color tools on your image. So if you already know where you want to crop, do it before making other adjustments for more accurate results. (It's also okay to wait till later to crop if you aren't sure yet about what you'll want to trim.)
Try Auto Smart Fix and/or the Smart Fix slider. Undo if necessary.
Pretty soon you'll get a good idea of how likely it is that this fix will do a good job on your photos. Some people love it; others think it makes their pictures too grainy.
If Smart Fix didn't do the trick, work your way down through the other Lighting and Color commands until you like the way your photo looks.
Read the sections earlier in this chapter to understand what each command does to your photo.
Sharpen.
Try to make sharpening your last adjustment, because other commands can give you funky results on photos you've already sharpened. But if you're a beginner and not comfortable with layers, you can sharpen before using Whiten Teeth, Make Dull Skies Blue, or "Black and White – High Contrast" in the Touch Up panel. (See Touch-Ups for more about why you'd wait to use these.)
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