Photoshop & Premiere Elements
The way we take photographs has changed quite dramatically over the years. You may not be old enough to remember things such as Polaroid cameras or having to put actual film in your camera and then take it to the store to be developed and printed on photographic paper, but that is how we used to do things not too long ago.
Now everyone just uses the camera on their smartphone, which works better than most digital cameras anyway. Doing so allows us to easily and instantly share our pictures with friends and family, and even do some minor editing of these pictures before we send them off.
Once you start getting into taking pictures, you may find yourself wanting to edit your photos to do things such as enhance the way they look, crop out parts you don’t want in the picture, add other elements to your pictures, and so on. You have most likely heard the term “Photoshopped” when someone refers to editing a picture, and there is a good reason for this. Adobe Photoshop is the go-to software program for professionals who want to do some serious customizing of their pictures. If there is something you want done to your photos, then Photoshop can most likely do it for you—if you know how to use it, that is.
For those of us who don’t need to perform miracles on our pictures, there is a lower level of Photoshop we can use called Photoshop Elements. This software offers enough features to do all the basic editing we need, plus it can also do some pretty fancy stuff as well. It also costs MUCH less than the full version of Photoshop.
The goal of this book is to get you comfortable using Photoshop Elements without confusing and irritating you at the same time so that anyone can make sense of the content without feeling lost.
One thing that is pretty common with people who record videos is that many times the video ends up being shown with all the footage that really doesn’t need to be seen, or the video ends up not being seen at all because the person doesn’t have the means to edit out all the unwanted footage to make a watchable video.
This is where using video editing software comes into play. When you have an easy way to edit and enhance your footage into something that others would enjoy watching, it makes the editing process fun and rewarding. Plus if you do it right, you can end up with a professional looking video that might even make you some money!
Adobe Premiere has been one of the most widely used video editing programs out there for many years and has some really advanced features that allow you to create some amazing videos. But if you are not a professional videographer then you might find this type of software to be intimidating and too complex to learn when it’s not something you are doing as a career.
Realizing this, Adobe released Premiere Elements which is geared towards video editors who want to make great looking movies without having to get a degree in video editing. It has a much simpler interface yet still offers some advanced features to make your movies stand out.
The goal of this book is to get you comfortable using Premiere Elements without confusing and irritating you at the same time. I find that if you explain things like someone is a total beginner, even if they are not, it makes that topic much easier