This is the year to capture those fantastic holiday photos that you'll treasure forever! Thanks to Adobe for helping me share this post with you.
It’s that time of year when we try to capture the magic of the season. If I walk away with a great photo of the kids building a snowman, my mum and mother-in-law dressed up as reindeer on Christmas morning (every year folks…it’s a treasured tradition!) or a tableful of holiday appetizers, I’m more than happy.
Before I really understood my camera, or had any experience with post-process, I ended up with yellow-tinged food photos or family photos that were less than memorable. Whether you have a fancy camera or are shooting with your iPhone, it’s possible to capture those moments, and make them look even better in post-process, with very little effort.
I’m excited to announce that I’m acting as an ambassador for Adobe Photoshop Elements. Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to give you some tips and tricks so that you can capture fantastic photos of the kids making Christmas cookies or the beautiful roast turkey that came out of the oven golden brown and juicy. And you’ll see just how easy it is to play around with the lighting, hue and tons of other fun features in Photoshop Elements.
The more and more that I’ve worked with Photoshop Elements, the more I’ve come to realize what a powerful tool it is. And, don’t worry, it’s not break-the-bank expensive. Actually, it’s something you might want to put on your holiday wish list…and then spend all of the days after the holidays playing around with your photos to your heart’s content.
The beauty of the software is that there are three different levels (Quick, Guided and Expert) available for processing your photos, depending how fancy you want to get.
Some of the new tools available in Photoshop Elements 13 are pretty fun to play with. Here are just a few of them:
Crop Tool
When you look at your photo on the screen, you may find that there’s a whole bunch of unwanted space to one side, or you didn’t zoom in enough when taking the photo. The crop tool actually gives you several suggestions of how it thinks you could crop the photo. Just click and…BOOM…it’s cropped.
If you need to print the photo to a certain size (to fit that new 5x7 frame that you got for Christmas), just choose the “5x7” option on the dropdown menu. Easy peasy.
Black & White Guided Edits
I absolutely adore black and white. That has nothing to do with the fact that it magically erases the wrinkles around my eyes (ahem). While it’s easy enough to switch something to black and white in Elements, maybe you want to do something a little fancier, such as adding a color pop. In the “Guided Edits”, Elements gives you step by step directions to make this happen. It took me all of 3 minutes to change the photo from the one on the top to the one on the bottom.
Facebook Cover Photo
Once you have some awesome holiday photos, you may want to share them with the world (or at least with all of your Facebook friends). How cool would it be to have a customized Facebook cover photo so that you can show off those photos?
I used the Facebook tool in Elements to make a new cover photo for my Cookin’ Canuck Facebook page. After choosing from one of the templates offered, I dragged and dropped my photos onto the template, moved them around to where I wanted, changed the background color and frames and uploaded it to Facebook. Voila!
Even if you don’t use these specific tools, you’ll find that Photoshop Elements gives you the power to adjust your photos so they look just right and to play around with cool effects.
Disclosure: This post was sponsored by Adobe, plus they provided the software for the giveaway. All opinions are my own.
kim hill
love this software,endless possabilities.
Aly ~ Cooking In Stilettos
I need to learn Photoshop in the worst way. My photo challenge - cropping correctly. Don't get me started on the rest of my list *LOL*
Melanie
Totally useful giveaway! My biggest challenge is to find time to take candid shots. If I'm not taking food photos, I'm posing the kids, lol.
Trisha Delaney
Iam adding his to my Christmas wish list - question though, what are the differences betwee Photoshop Element and Photoshop Premiere Elements?
Lauren+@+Healthy+Delicious
I use the full version of photoshop and am totally lamenting the lack of features like this. That crop suggestions thing? brilliant!
Amanda
Seriously awesome giveaway!!!
Anna @ Crunchy Creamy Sweet
So fun! Entering!
Angie
Great giveaway! I don't use photoshop as much as I"d like. I need to do some more tutorials.
Susan
These are some great tips and Elements definitely looks a lot less daunting than the full version of photoshop. I love the black and white photo!
Kim+(Feed+Me,+Seymour)
My husband is a graphic designer and so we have a lot of access to Adobe products. I know a lot of bloggers use other software but really, Adobe is where it's at! Once you use it, nothing else compares!