Photoshop Elements 4 Help

[laffinorse]

Advice required,

When cropping a photo with Elements 4, which is the best way?

Use the Photo Ratio, which keeps the same photo size but zooms in,
Then continue to crop a smaller area each time until you get what you want.
And finally resize image.

Or use the no restriction option to crop to exactly what you want, then resize image.

After cropping and resizing complete any enhancements, i.e. unsharp mask, feather etc.

Or is it better to do the enhancements first, then do the crop etc?

Bewildered!!!!!

[Ollie]

Depending on the photograph I usually use the no restriction cropping. I would not advise cropping a photograph more than once. Sometimes the photo ratio cropping works out ok though. After cropping I usually resize the photo and then make any colour adjustments etc. Unsharp mask is the last thing I do before saving.

No doubt others do it differently but this works for me.
Roger

[laffinorse]

Originally Posted by Ollie

Depending on the photograph I usually use the no restriction cropping. I would not advise cropping a photograph more than once. Sometimes the photo ratio cropping works out ok though. After cropping I usually resize the photo and then make any colour adjustments etc. Unsharp mask is the last thing I do before saving.

No doubt others do it differently but this works for me.
Roger

Thanks for reply,

Will try your method and also experiment


Cheers

[Paul mabbott]

Know nothing about PSE *but* the same theories apply whatever your photo programme.
1 crop first - this gives you the smaller picture which, if nothing else, speeds up the computer's operating time!
2 do other manipulations - e.g. altering contrast/brightness;
3 resize to your required picture dimensions (in pixels); always retain original dimensions or you'll distort the image;
4 (if necessary) amend the quality of the jpeg (or whatever) if to reduce file size (in Kb).
5 save your photo.
*If* you want to alter anything after saving then go back to your original (i.e. do *not* overwrite your original - whenever you save do it as (e.g.) rabbit1, rabbit2, rabbit3, rabbit, rabbit .... ). Whenever you save an image, you are losing some detail so the more times you save, the fuzzier the photo.

Originally Posted by laffinorse

When cropping a photo with Elements 4, which is the best way?
Use the Photo Ratio, which keeps the same photo size but zooms in,
Then continue to crop a smaller area each time until you get what you want.
And finally resize image.
Or use the no restriction option to crop to exactly what you want, then resize image.
After cropping and resizing complete any enhancements, i.e. unsharp mask, feather etc.
Or is it better to do the enhancements first, then do the crop etc?
Bewildered!!!!!

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by Paul mabbott

*If* you want to alter anything after saving then go back to your original (i.e. do *not* overwrite your original - whenever you save do it as (e.g.) rabbit1, rabbit2, rabbit3, rabbit, rabbit .... ). Whenever you save an image, you are losing some detail so the more times you save, the fuzzier the photo.

I agree that you shouldnt routinely overwrite your original, if for no other reason than that you might later feel that you had made a mistake . however the point about loosing detail with every save is only true of .jpeg files (and some other obscure formats) if you want to resave an original for any reason you should first convert it to a .tiff which is a "lossless format" ie one which does not lose detail with each save.

The downside of thisd is that .tiff is an uncompressed format and thus the resulting files are much larger and will take up more space o your hard drive or other storage media.

[laffinorse]

Originally Posted by eeyore

I agree that you shouldnt routinely overwrite your original, if for no other reason than that you might later feel that you had made a mistake . however the point about loosing detail with every save is only true of .jpeg files (and some other obscure formats) if you want to resave an original for any reason you should first convert it to a .tiff which is a "lossless format" ie one which does not lose detail with each save.

The downside of thisd is that .tiff is an uncompressed format and thus the resulting files are much larger and will take up more space o your hard drive or other storage media.

Thanks for all your advice re cropping etc,

I am a bit confused about the above?

If I copy an original photo to my desktop, do I loose quality, only in the copy or both.

If I open a copy of original in PSE4 make changes then save as say pic1 then reopen pic1 again to do more work this I presume would cause a loss in quality?

Confused

[speckled wood]

Something I do is to download from my camera into a folder using that day's date I use the reverse method of dating and would call today's folder 20061106 tomorrow's will be 20061107 this means that in Explorer the folders will "stack" up in order. I leave the files in these folders as downloaded from the camera and copy and rename any file that I want to work on, this way all my original photos are saved in case I need to rework one again. I have used this system since I had my first digital camera back in 1998 (A Casio QV10 with 320x240 pixel resolution!)

[Tormentil]

I use a similar work process. A folder (Originals) for the originals by date, a folder (Pending) for photos I want to alter, a folder (Finished) for the finished articles, in sub-folders by type (birds, insects, butterflys etc.).

I never alter the originals.

[Wilf]

Originally Posted by laffinorse

Thanks for all your advice re cropping etc,

I am a bit confused about the above?

If I copy an original photo to my desktop, do I loose quality, only in the copy or both.

If I open a copy of original in PSE4 make changes then save as say pic1 then reopen pic1 again to do more work this I presume would cause a loss in quality?

Confused

As eeyore said, it does depend on the format being used. But if you are downloading jpeg files from the camera to your pc, every time you use save as from the original file you will lose a little in quality. This won’t alter the original file.
After this every time you save after making alterations you lose a bit more.

[laffinorse]

Originally Posted by Wilf

As eeyore said, it does depend on the format being used. But if you are downloading jpeg files from the camera to your pc, every time you use save as from the original file you will lose a little in quality. This won’t alter the original file.
After this every time you save after making alterations you lose a bit more.

Thanks for all replies,

I have noted all your comments re work flow, and will adapt to suit me.

Thanks for reply Wilf re loss of quality, and that the original file will not loss quality.

Therefore if I am not satisfied with the enhancements made from the 1st copy of the original photo, is better to create a new copy of the original photo and rework on that one, rather than reworking the the saved enhanced 1st copy, for quality reasons ?

Hope you can understand what I mean

Thanks very much