Photoshop Elements 7: Getting Started and Installing
Saturday, September 5th 2009 @ 10:58 PM (not yet rated)
Adobe's Photoshop Elements 7 (PSE7) is a very useful program, one that actually serves (by careful design) several needs of a modern image-smith. Before beginning the "installation" I'll take a quick look at the tasks for which this program is designed.
1) The "Organize" module is a Browser, which is a program that shows the images on your computer by either the folder structure they reside in or other criteria you decide. You see your images in groups of thumbnails, and can select individual images or specified groups to "send" to the other modules of PSE7 for further work or sending them out to the web or in emails.
But this isn't "just" a browser, as say, Bridge in Photoshop; this is a browser that can also be a "catalog", a program that keeps your images in it's own database, with all the info you've placed "into" the metadata of the images stored in such a way so that you can search for individual or groups of images by the keywords and other metadata you or someone else may have put "into" the image files. This is a VERY handy feature!
2) The "Edit" module is a pixel-editor, a program like "the full Photoshop" that is used to modify photograpic images. You can crop, change the color balance, retouch skin, lighten and darken, and many other tools. PSE7 actually has maybe 70% of the functionality of the full Photoshop, so for most amatuers and hobbyists, it may be all you need. And it it very easy to use the "Fix" module, as you'll see later on in the series.
3) The "Create" module is for projects done with your images ... such as albums, cards, galleries, books, collages, all that sort of thing. It comes with a lot of built-in templates for different kinds of projects, and you can use those or create new project kinds and templates yourself. There are resources for further projects and templates available through Adobe's on-line services as well as other places on the 'net.
4) And the "Share" module, for sending your images and projects off to be printed or out into the web, as galleries or emails.
I'll cover the use of the modules as we go along through a series of PSE7 articles.
I purchased my "copy" of PSE7 on-line from Adobe, and downloaded it from their servers to a folder on my desktop. You can also buy "hard" copies from stores everywhere, or of course, Amazon.com.
Either way, follow the rather simple instructions for getting the basic files on your computer and starting the installation process. After you get through a series of installation dialog boxes, when it is done it will probably ask to close your computer down and restart it. Make sure your other programs are saved and closed, and then do the restart.
When your computer is back "up", start up your PSE7 and the first screen you will see is this:
There is a box on the left side of the screen you should look at first: It's Adobe's ... for lack of a better metaphor ... "club" offer. If you choose to join their service, you have a certain amount of online storage for you images, and certain other services they offer. I don't need any of these things, but you might find it handy. Or like me, just ignore it. As they want you to realize you can always "join", you can't set the program to skip this opening dialog. I find this a bit annoying, but oh well ...
If you look at the top of the image, you'll see the four "buttons" to go right to any of the four working modules of PSE7, as listed both here and in my article above. Most of the time, you'll start in the "Organize" module, PSE7's browser/catalog program. For now, I'd suggest just clicking on "Organize".
When you click the Organize button the first time, you get this dialog:
This is asking if you want it to start by searching your computer for images to populate the catalog. If you click "Yes" (as I would suggest) you get a box showing your computer system's "file manager".
This is the way a Win-Vista machine looks with the "Windows 98" style interface ... I dislike the standard Vista look and find the older "paradigm" much easier to actually WORK in ... but that's another subject.
You can use your system's navigating/selecting tools to choose one or several folders for PSE7 to search and add to it's catalog, and if you have been really good about always storing your images in a regular and ordered system, this will work just fine.
But one of the best uses of PSE7's browser is to find and catalog ALL the images on the computer, as this will catch anything you've accidentally "dropped" somewhere and can't figure out where it went (yup, done that one ... ) or just find those images that programs and your scatter-brain self at some point ... scattered around your computer.
Note here, what happened when I clicked the box on the left that says "Computer" and then clicked on the "C" drive icon in the white area ... see the little button in the lower right that says "Get Photos"? It was grayed out before, and now it's usable. Click on it, and it will do just what you told it ... "import" into the catalog a few folders, or as I requested, the whole drive.
This is the box as it appeared several minutes later ... note that first, it searched the computer (no, I didn't have my 1-Terrabyte eSATA external attached) and found 21,496 images, and is in the process of importing them ... it has at this point 6,113 already "entered" into it's catalog or database.
This can take a while and it looks overwhelming with THAT many images ... but as you elininate whole directories after a brief glance, the numbers will come down pretty fast. And if someone's been looking at things they shouldn't be ... well, that could be interesting, right? Ahem ....
As soon as the import was finished, and all images were included in the catalog, this box popped up:
"The new photos have Keyword Tags attached to them. Select the Keyword Tags you would like to import." Now, you may find some keywords you put on images early in youfr digital experience, before you were as smart about these things as you are right now. And you may never have even known about keywording. But if you are like me, and worked pretty hard to get at least SOME of your images keyworded, the LAST thing you'd want to do is dump your hard work! I'll click "Select All" and get on with it.
Ah ... well, there's a bunch of system files and odd things, and thankfully it's not importing them. Doing a quick scan down this box, there wasn't anything here in the "non-importables" that was a problem. So ... I just hit the ol' "OK" button.
Now, up pops this:
After everytime you import, it will first just show the newly-imported files, and just so you know this, they created this nice little reminder. If you think it will be obvious why the rest of your catalog of images aren't showing after EVERY TIME you import or load new images, you can (like me) click the "OK" button and get rid of the little bugger forever.
Ahh ... now we're showing ... a lot of grahic images in the system files! Don't worry, we'll get rid of those soon enough. Note the leetle teeny text in the lower left corner saying it is generating thumbnails. We'll deal with this later, for right now we'll just let it make 'em as it wants.
After a while, PSE7 finished generating thumbnails, note that even though it "found" 21,000 image-type files, it only decided to import 16,663 ... so we're down several thousand files and haven't even done anything yet! I'd recommend just doing a quick visual "scan" of the files at this point ... just to see if you find something you hadn't realized yet you'd lost. And ... some of the icons and grapics I found I'm gonna copy and keep in a new folder I'm going to create, and you may see them around MPM someday!
Well, so much for installing and importing your first files. In our next article, we'll set the Preferences and maybe take a look at how and why you might like to set up your "workspaces". After that, there'll be editing or culling down your images, keywords and metadata, and of course ... a basic look at the "Edit" module where you can play with your images.
For now, feel free to look around and check things out. The "Help" files are actually better than most programs, which is also a plus. Have fun!
