Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows: The Missing Manual

Working with the Content and Favorites Panels

Adobe gives you a ton of artistic goodies to use for customizing your projects, and a special panel just to hold it all: the Content panel. You also get a Favorites panel, where you can keep the items you use most often from the Content panel (and from the Effects panel, too).

TROUBLESHOOTING MOMENT: About PSE Files

Anytime you create a multipage document in Elements, you get one file format choice when it's time to save—PSE. This special format has both advantages and disadvantages.

When you create a PSE file, you actually create a folder containing a separate .psd file for each page (or for each double-page spread if you're creating a photo book), and the PSE project file, which contains all the info Elements needs to reassemble your document the next time you open it. That's handy when you're working in Elements, but the drawback is that hardly any other program can read these files. PSE files work just fine if you print at home or use Kodak Gallery for online printing. You can send PSE files to Kodak Gallery as easily as you send JPEGs.

The rub comes if you want to use a different printing service. If you make, say, a book that you want to print at Lulu.com or MyPublisher.com, they can't work with your PSE file—at least not at this writing. Most printing services require PDF files. Fortunately, Elements can save your multipage PSE file as a multipage PDF that you can upload to your printing service of choice. (Be aware, though, that ...