The New Adobe Photoshop Elements v6.0 Classes

Late in 2007, Adobe made major upgrades to its award winning photo editing and organizing program. Starting in January 2008 Howard Benedict will be offering a two month program for beginners in digital photography. It comes in three parts which may be taken independently depending on one's experience and needs.

Session #1: The first part is a single class lecture, for most club members that have years of Kodachrome slides and Kodacolor negatives and hundreds of color or black and white prints that must be converted from an Analog format into a Digital format by use of the club's scanner, this session is a complete demonstration of Scanning or Digitizing techniques. Today with cutting edge flat bed scanners this is a simple process requiring very little technical expertise.

As most of us know now, all Digital Cameras automatically produce photos in digital format which are stored in a computer. These photos, plus any that are converted to digital by scanning, are all that is needed to produce CDs and DVDs as a permanent archiving method. However, it is of little value to have thousands of photos regardless of where they are stored in the old yellow Kodak slide boxes or stored in a computer if you do not have a simple method of indexing them so that they can be found quickly on a moments notice.

Adobe has given the industry an easy to use program for under $80 that will do almost anything needed to index AND to correct exposure, color quality and tints and address a multitude of other photographic editing needs.

Session #2: Introduction to the Organizing and Editing parts of the Elements v6.0 follows the first Scanner class. This is an Orientation session which should be taken before anyone takes the following two weeks of Organizing plus four weeks of Editing working with a Hands-On Computer in the Multipurpose Room. The first two sessions (Scanner and Organize Orientation) do not require registration as they are not hands on classes where the number of computers limits class size.

Session #3 & 4: The first two week Hands On sessions in Organizing teach a quick but comprehensive technique for organizing every photo that exists in a member's computer so that even with thousands of photos you can locate any single photo in about ten seconds. This uses the same data base management program that has made Quicken so famous for organizing personal finances. While the program is complex, using it is simple and easy.

Once you can find any photo you have in your computer you can creatively put them together into a slide show, a photo album, into calendars, printing them individually at home or at Walgreen's or similar stores, putting them into albums to copy to a CD or a DVD for mailing to friends and family. This sharing is highly automated so it is accomplished easily without photography experience.

Sign up is required for each of the next two Hands On given in the multipurpose computer room as space is limited to 24 members. The first two months of classes, January and February 2008, are already full, so the next availability is March and April. If a member has already taken the Organize portion in the past two years they may only need to sign up for the four week Editing part.

Session #5 to 8: Often photos that have been scanned come from manual film days where you had to guess at exposure which affects the quality of prints and their color characteristics. Consequently this final four week stand alone segment of Elements gives you the ability to edit your photos by cropping, changing the color balance, increasing the contrast especially ones taken on cloudy days or the brightness, combining several pictures or faces into one photo, indeed literally hundreds of major and minor corrections to convert your photos from simple snapshots to gallery quality photos. Four weeks of Editing on a basic level will enable you to be able to do most things needed to improve your photo's quality and then to email or make DVDs of these photos or slide shows to share with family or friends.

Adobe Photoshop Elements v6.0 is the current edition of this great program. It has won the "Best in Show" award for six consecutive years from the best photography journals and magazines. It is designed for amateurs with little photographic experience who want to be able to find and edit any of their photos quickly. Especially with the advent of the digital camera most people are now taking two to three times the photos than they ever did in the film days as there is no developing or film costs associated with digital photography and cameras have come down in price about 94% over the past six years.

The current Elements v6.0 is a major change from past years and brings new possibilities never before available to most amateur photographers. You must have the basic skill to operate your computer comfortably but all photo oriented skills are taught as part of the course.

Sign-up is best done electronically at the Club's web site but there are also sign up sheets on the Bulletin Board in the Club. As mentioned above only the Hands On sessions at a computer #3 through #8 require advance sign up. Because of the limited number of places available at the computers we encourage early sign up to avoid full classes.

Instructor for the Element 6.0 classes is: Howard Benedict