Book Image

Mastering Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020 - Second Edition

By : Robin Nichols
Book Image

Mastering Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020 - Second Edition

By: Robin Nichols

Overview of this book

Adobe Photoshop Elements is a raster graphics editor for entry-level photographers, image editors, and hobbyists. Updated and improved to cover the latest features of Photoshop Elements 2020, this second edition includes focused coverage of Adobe's new AI-powered features that are designed to make the editing process more efficient, creative and fun. This book takes you through the complexities of image editing in easy-to-follow, bite-sized chunks, helping you to quickly recognize the editing challenge at hand and use suitable tools and techniques to overcome it. You’ll start by learning how to import, organize, manage, edit, and use your pictures in a format that’s designed for creative photography projects. Throughout this Adobe Photoshop Elements book, you'll discover how to fix different photographic problems using an extensive repertoire of commonly applied solutions. Common processes such as applying artistic effects to creative projects, custom image makeovers, processing images for social media, and other file export methods will also be covered. By the end of this book, you’ll have learned about the impressive tools available in Photoshop Elements 2020, and how it is designed not only for photographers who’d like to dip their toes into the editing world, but also for those wanting simple but effective ideas on how to expand their creativity while remaining time-efficient.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Pseudo layer masks

Before we get into describing the use of true masks in Photoshop Elements, let's have a look at a feature I call pseudo layer masks.

A true mask is one that is attached to an image thumbnail in the Layer panel. Its default color is white, which means that it is see-through, but as soon as you paint black onto that mask, it becomes opaque, therefore blocking whatever effect that particular layer is displaying, to reveal what it looked like before it was changed. For a beginner, this might seem complicated.

Masks are designed to isolate parts of the image in order to make changes without affecting everything in the picture; for example, to change the depth of field "look" in a landscape. To replicate this slightly complex action using a pseudo mask layer (this is my name for the technique), simply duplicate the layer, then add some diffusion (that is, using a Gaussian Blur filter) to the duplicated layer so that everything goes blurry, and then...