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mikey answers:

Many of the commands used in Elements are the same as those used in the “big brother” Photoshop. For that reason you should be able to locate tutorials for Photoshop that you can adapt to your Elements version.

If you feel rich, you can always to into Borders or Barnes and Noble and spend $50 on a how-to book on the Elements version you own. You may find that there are three or four different books by different authors to choose from, so pick the one that makes the most sense to you and you think will be the easiest to understand.

mikey answers:

You need to do a little studying of basic concepts. Photoshop in all its versions, as well as free Open Source apps like Gimp and Paint.net, and other for purchase apps like PaintshopPro are all RASTER programs. They work with pixels. Illustrator is a drawing program, but to be more correct, it is a VECTOR program. It thinks in lines, curves, points. Vectors don’t care about resolution because they are mathematically generated (you don’t have to worry about the math, the computer takes care of that.) A VECTOR is infinitely scalable: you could create a vector design at a small size, say 6″ by 6″ and then scale it up to 6 feet by 6 feet or even 60 feet by 60 feet and you would not lose quality. You can also scale it down: thus people will do graphic design work such as logos in a vector program like Illustrator (its main competitor, Freehand, was killed by Adobe because Adobe bought Macromedia, which produced Freehand) and test them to see if they look good at various sizes (you can end up with a font that’s too small for example, even if the overall design still works.)

Illustrator also deals with text better than Photoshop: once text is rasterized (converted to pixels) in Photoshop, which you have to do eventually for various reasons, it is no longer editable as text. You can do some manipulation, but it’s like manipulating anything else in the image. In Illustrator, text can remain text, it does not have to be rasterized. Instead, if for some reason you need to change it from actual text, you create outlines. Now the text has become an object, and can be manipulated like any other object in a vector based drawing.

Although you can “draw” in a raster program like Photoshop, your lines will be fuzzy, if you look close enough you will eventually see the little squares. If you try to enlarge it too much those squares, the pixels, become even more obvious. So in Photoshop or any other raster program you need to work pretty close to your actual size. The problem with working with large images is that your file size goes up. And when you learn to use layers (a must for using Photoshop or Photoshop Elements) you will find those files can get really big. In a vector program, you will not get that fuzziness because the lines are not constructed out of pixels.

So you should investigate both. Note that there is at least one free OpenSource vector program that you could try and that’s InkScape.

Hope this helps.

mikey answers:

Photoshop Elements is great for editing photos and can also be use to create graphics. Your decision to purchase it may depend on what you want to use it for. For creating graphics, many people prefer Adobe Illustrator. I’ve use PE (various versions) extensively for retouching old family photos, and it was very easy for me to learn how to use it. If you do decide to get PE, I’d get the latest version that is recommended for your pc.

mikey answers:

There are some things you can’t do directly to photos with Elements because it lacks the tools or menu commands of Photoshop but there are workarounds for just about everything. The better you know how to use Elements, the more you can do with it. Personally, I’m at the point with Elements where no Photoshop tutorial scares me anymore;-)

Here are some tutorials.
These are for 7 and 8 but, of course, you can do them with 9.

Http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/photoshopelements/articles/tutorial_index.html

These are for 9 and are for learning to use the program. Even though you know Photoshop, you never know what you might learn from wandering through some of these.

Http://tv.adobe.com/show/learn-photoshop-elements-9

Here are general Elements tutorials for versions 7, 8 and 9. These will give you the general idea of some of the things that can be done with Elements and with how to do them.

Http://www.alibony.com/pse/index.php

And here’s the link to Elements Plus, an add on that expands Elements’ Photoshop functionality by making use of the fact that, because Elements is a build of Photoshop, it has the code for some Photoshop functions that don’t show up anywhere in the editing workspace. These are actions which self-install and show up in the Action Player. You can download the Demo version which is free and not time-limited to try it out.

Http://simplephotoshop.com/elementsplus/

http://www.alibony.com/pse/index.php

I’m not familiar with “color levels”, googled it and got nothing but links about adjusting colors using Levels (which you can do in Elements;-). You might want to add some information to your question telling us what you mean by “color levels”….please.

mikey answers:

Save the file as a JPG and send that instead.