Unless you frame every shot perfectly (can anyone outside of a studio?) you will inevitably want to “reframe” some of your photos where your subject is not quite where you want them, or maybe to take out distracting objects close to the edges. If these adjustments can be made by retaining a rectangular section of your photo, and disregarding the rest, then that is exactly when cropping comes into play.  This tutorial shows you several ways to crop your photos, a process that is far easier than many people realise. All the techniques shown can be applied in Photoshop or Elements (with one exception with the guided learning feature in Elements).

Photoshop Elements: Cropping your Photos

Dark Side of the lens is a blog for the aspiring home photographer, scrapbooker or photo enthusiast. The backbone of this blog is based upon the free video tutorials to assist the "not so advanced user" to learn how to best use Adobe Photoshop Elements to improve their photos through digital image editing. Look for our free Podcast in the iTunes Music Store.

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Canvas is a very forgiving medium, with the ability to hide a wealth of sins in many photos, though it is still the usual case of the better the photo the better the end result. However, due to the nature, especially the texture, of canvas you are able to get large high quality prints from even the most basic of cameras.

What many (most?) people do not realise though is the huge variation there is in the quality of the canvases you can get printed via the internet, or indeed by walking into a store.

A couple of years ago I put quite some time and effort in finding a great canvas printing company for my own prints, and in doing so taught myself what to look for in a good canvas.

Rather than simply passing this information on to you entirely myself I decided to go an interview a real expert.

So, here you go, my first venture into the world of film making!

Printing your photos on canvas

As promised, here is the second video to complete our exploration of “levels” in Photoshop Elements.

Photoshop Elements: Levels Part 2

I remember when I was first learning digital photo editing and I stumbled across something called “levels”. Some of my photos had looked grey and dull, though I did not realize it at the time, and these suddenly sprang to life as I learned how to use the levels adjustments in Photoshop.

Although not quite as powerful as the “curves” adjustments in Photoshop (which also has the levels adjustments by the way) the levels adjustments in Elements are something you are going to find very powerful, in fact to me they are a “must check” on every photo I edit.

Photoshop Elements: Levels Part 1

I remember when I was first learning digital photo editing and I stumbled across something called “levels”. Some of my photos had looked grey and dull, though I did not realize it at the time, and these suddenly sprang to life as I learned how to use the levels adjustments in Photoshop.

There are several different types of adjustment layers, such as levels or hue & saturation. In this tutorial I demonstrate the use of an adjustment layer, using a hue & saturation adjustment layer as an example.

Photoshop Elements: Adjustment Layers

Photoshop Elements does not include the layer mask functionality, in its native form at least. However, it does include adjustment layers, and these little beauties have their own layer masks. In this video I show you a rather clever trick whereby you can hijack this mask and use it as you would a normal layer mask.

Photoshop Elements: Cropping your Photos

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