Level 2 Basic

Lesson 7

Quick Fix -
Specific Corrections

The “Quick Fix” screen is explored in more detail.

This lesson will illustrate user control over the “Quick Fix” in further detail.

Introduction

In this lesson, we will cover automated corrections along with the manual override to these corrections. We will work on adjusting the tones and colors in your images, as well as sharpening.

From the “Photo Well”, click on the image that you want to work on.

A blue border will highlight the selected image.

From the Main menu, click on:

[ Edit ]

Then click on:

[ Go to Quick Fix… ]

Once you enter the “Quick Fix” screen, set the “Before & After” view to “Portrait”.

Then click on:

[ Fit On Screen ]

“Rotate” to correct the orientation if necessary.

“Levels” is a tool used by Photoshop to correct the tones in your image.

Elements can attempt a complete an “Automatic Levels Fix” for the entire image.

We recommend that you let the program do so. It’s best to correct the tones automatically. You will have some manual override.

Beside “Levels”, click on:

[ Auto ]

This is the way “Auto Fix” worked on our example image.

“Contrast” is a tool used by Photoshop to give images more punch. It does this by darkening the dark parts of the image and lightening the light parts of the image.

Elements can attempt a complete an “Automatic Contrast Fix” for the entire image.

We do not recommend that you let the program attempt to correct the contrast.

For the purposes of this demonstration, we have clicked beside “Contrast” on:

[ Auto ]

This is the way “Auto Fix” worked on our example image.

We are unhappy with the “Auto Levels” & “Auto Contrast”, so we clicked on:

We recommend that you use “Auto Levels” and then manually make fine tuning adjustments.

We recommend that you do not use “Auto Contrast”.

     1. Auto Levels

     2. Lighten Shadows  (as needed)

     3. Darken Highlights  (as needed)

     4. Midtone Contrast   (as needed)

Do Not Use: Auto Contrast

We recommend that you let the program do its best to correct the tones automatically. You will have some manual override.

Beside “Levels”, click on:

[ Auto ]

Now move the slider beside:

[ Lighten Shadows ]

Adjust to your taste, judging by the “After” image.

Here we can judge the effect of the “Lighten Shadows” slider by looking at the “After” image.

Now move the slider beside:

[ Midtone Contrast ]

Adjust to your taste, judging by the “After” image.

Here we can judge the effect of the “Midtone Contrast” slider by looking at the “After” image.

We have a confession to make.  We intentionally made some poor manual adjustments for the purpose of this demonstration.

We are unhappy with the manual “Lighten Shadows” & “Midtone Contrast” corrections.

We wish to undo the “Manual” settings and leave “Auto Levels” in place.

Therefore, we click on:

This is the way “Auto Levels” worked on our example image.

All the manual adjustments are gone.

We were not entirely happy with it.

But we can fix that now.

Now move the slider beside:

[ Darken Highlights ]

Adjust to your taste, judging by the “After” image.

Here we can judge the effect of the “Darken Highlights” slider by looking at the “After” image.

We have taken a very complex route through these corrections in order to illustrate how to try things out, as well as how to back up and redo things.

Normally you can move through the corrections quickly and efficiently as shown in the Pane on the right.

1.    Auto Levels

2.    No Auto Contrast

3.    Remember the starting slider positions

4.    Use Shadows Slider to taste

5.    Use Highlights Slider to taste

6.    Use Midtone Slider to taste

7.    Go back and reset slides

We recommend that you let Elements attempt to set the colors automatically.

It usually does a good job of color correction.

We feel that “Auto Color” has done a good job of color correction.

However, we fell we can do a little better by tweaking things with a little “Manual Override”.

You can manually make adjustments to the color by moving the sliders and judging the results on the “After” image

A word of advice, a little goes a long way. Go easy.

In this example, we:

1.      Increased “Saturation” a touch.

2.      We left “Hue” alone.

3.      We set “Temperature” a little to the left.

Here we can judge the effect of the manual adjustments to color by looking at the “After” image.

Almost all digital images need sharpening.  The process of digitalizing an image imparts a little blur to the image.

You’ll need to sharpen.

We recommend letting the program start the sharpening process.

Beside “Sharpen”, click on:

[ Auto ]

In the “After” image, you can judge the effect of sharpening.

1. It’s hard to judge the effect of “Sharpening” on a       small image.

2. It’s hard to judge the effect “Sharpening” will have on a print by looking at the same image on a computer screen. The sharpening will look more extreme on the monitor.

After applying the “Auto Sharpening”, you can manually add to the amount of sharpening.

This is done by moving the slider beside:

“Amount”

Here you can judge the effects of manually adding extra “Sharpening” in the “After” image.

1. A little sharpening goes a long way.

2. It’s better not to over-sharpen.

3. If you over sharpen, you will often see halos along high contrast lines.

4. Often the only way to know if you have sharpened incorrectly is by looking at a print of the image.

To leave the Quick Fix” screen, click on the indicated button:

The image from your camera was probably saved in a file format called “JPEG”.  This format will recompress your image every time it saves it.  This will result in a loss of quality.

We recommend that you convert your corrected image to Adobe’s file format called “PSD”.  This is a lossless format that will damage the quality of your image.

To accomplish this, click on the down arrow beside “Format”

Then select:

Click in the indicated Check Boxes to save the image:

[ As a Copy ]

The corrected image will now appear to the right of the original image in the “Photo Well”.

Note: The original image still exists untouched. 

There is now a second image with our changes in effect.

Summary

In this lesson we covered automated corrections, along with the manual overrides to these corrections.  We worked on adjusting the tones and colors in your images, as well as sharpening the image.