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)

Sharpening

The process of sharpening has always confused photographers, especially those new to the profession, simply because one of its names is unsharp masking, which doesn't seem to make any sense. Let me explain this a little more.

The way software sharpens an image is by increasing the contrast along the edges of objects inside the image. If this is a portrait, the software will try and increase the contrast around the edges of the eyes, the nose, the lips, and the hairline—those kinds of dominant features. There's no point in applying the same amount of sharpening to the smoothest skin tones because, if you enhance the skin pores, the result will not be flattering.

To this end, the Unsharp Masking tool creates a black and white mask in the background, which limits the sharpening effect to those (contrast) edges, and not to the open areas of skin.

Elements has several sharpening tools, including the Sharpen Filters, Unsharp Mask, Adjust Sharpness, and...