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Last updated 7/26/2011
Chapter 8: Color and tonal correction
Adobe® Photoshop® Elements has tools that let you adjust the tonal range, color, and sharpness of your photos. You
can also remove dust spots or other defects from your photos. You can accomplish these tasks in different modes,
depending on your experience and needs.
Color and tonal correction basics
Color correction overview
Photoshop Elements provides several tools and commands for fixing the tonal range, color, and sharpness in your
photos, and for removing dust spots or other defects. You can work in one of three workspaces, depending on your
experience and needs.
Guided Edit If you are new to digital imaging and Photoshop Elements, you can use Guided Edit to guide you through
the color correction task. It is also a good way to increase your understanding of the workflow.
Quick Fix If you have limited knowledge of digital imaging, Quick Fix is a good place to start fixing photos. It has many
of the basic tools for correcting color and lighting.
Full Edit If you’ve worked with images before, you’ll find that the Full Edit workspace provides the most flexible and
powerful image-correction environment. It has the lighting and color-correction commands, along with tools for
fixing image defects, making selections, adding text, and painting on your images.
When working with some of the adjustment commands, you can make adjustments directly to the image pixels. Or
you can use adjustment layers to make nondestructive adjustments that you can easily tweak until your image is right.
In Full Edit, the Smart Brush tool and Detail Smart Brush tool automatically create an adjustment layer for the
correction you’re applying.
Camera Raw If you shoot digital images in your camera’s raw format, you can open and correct raw files in the Camera
Raw dialog box. Because your camera has not yet processed the raw files, you can adjust the color and exposure to
improve the images. Often you don’t have to make other adjustments in Photoshop
Elements. To open camera raw
files in Photoshop
Elements, first save them in a supported file format.
More Help topics
“About camera raw image files” on page 72
“Adjust color and tonality using the Smart Brush tools” on page 108
Correct color in Quick Fix
Quick Fix conveniently assembles many of the basic photo-fixing tools in Photoshop Elements. As you work in Quick
Fix, limit the number of color and lighting controls that you apply to a photo. Generally, you use only one of the Auto
controls on a photo. If that control doesn’t achieve what you want, click the Reset button and try another one. You can
also adjust your image using the slider controls, whether you’ve used an Auto control or not. Perform the Sharpening
fix last on an image.
