Adobe Photoshop Elements Enhance Menu - Including Adjust Color, Unsharp Mask, and Convert to Black and White

The adjust color menu option also gives you a range of choices when working with your pictures. Here, I’ve designed a bulleted list in order to explain each of the different options:

• Remove Color Cast - This will allow you to remove any color tinges that have appeared on your photo either from the camera’s auto options or the white balance being off. You click on part of an image that is supposed to be true black, white, or gray, and Photoshop Elements will correct the rest of the image based on where you’ve clicked.

• Adjust Hue/Saturation - Hue will allow for you to change the overcast color of your image depending on where you move the slider. Saturation will allow you to make the image more colorful or switch it to black and white. The lightness slider will allow for you to make the image brighter or add more shadow.

• Remove Color - This option also changes your image to a black and white image.

• Replace Color - Using replace color allows you to change one color in an image to a different color. Make your strawberries green or your oranges purple. To do this, click the eyedropper button in the previewer box or on the image itself, use the eyedropper + tool to add colors to change or the eyedropper – button to remove colors you don’t want to change. To pick a new color you can either adjust the hue, saturation, and lightness sliders or you can click the results box and choose a new color from the color picker.

• Adjust Color Curves - This allows you to choose a preset selection to fix your photo’s color tones. You can adjust each color channel individually in the case that one object in the photo was too close to the flash or drenched in shadow.

• Adjust Color for Skin Tone - This option works great for group shots of people where someone’s skin tone may not look correct in the photo. Click on someone’s skin tone that looks correct and Photoshop Elements will fix the rest of the photo. If you aren’t happy with the results, you can click on a different point in the photo or use the adjustable sliders to attain the result you’re trying to achieve.

• Defringe Layer- This can be used on different layers of an image that sometimes get a halo effect when the layers are stacked. This tool rids your image of the fringing that occurs.

• Color Variations- With color variations you can select the color tones you want to fix (dark tones, middle tones, or light tones) and drag the amount slider to change the intensity of the change. You can then click on the thumbnail buttons to adjust your image to match the thumbnail, as well as get a preview of what the image will look like before you permanently make the changes

Convert to Black and White: When you convert your image to black and white you can choose from pre-selected color tones such as scenic landscape or newspaper. You can also adjust the sliders for changing the intensity of the black and white effect.

Unsharp Mask: Contrary to its name, unsharp mask is actually used to sharpen an image. Unsharp mask uses the illusion of contrast to make an image appear sharper. You adjust three sliders all of which create a different sharpening effect. Amount will control how strong or weak the contrast is, in other words, how much edge contrast will be added and how much sharpness effect it will give you. The radius slider controls the width of halos the mask produces. The higher the radius, the more obvious the sharpening effect will be. Lastly, the threshold slider will adjust how many adjacent pixels need to be selected and considered in the edge. To be simple, it separates signal from noise.

Adjust Sharpness: The adjust sharpness menu selection will focus softer edges in a photograph to increase the clarity and make the image appear sharper and more contrasted. You can set the radius of pixels, the percentage amount, and what type of blur you want to remove from the image. You can also preview the image before you make the changes.