Opening Stored Images

If you’ve got photos already stored on your computer, you have several options for opening them with Elements. If you don’t have Elements running but the file’s format is set to open in Elements, then simply double-click the file’s icon to launch Elements and open the image. (To change which files open automatically in Elements, see the box on Picking the File Types That Elements Opens.) You’ve also got a few ways to open files from within Elements:

• From the Organizer, for files not yet in the Organizer: Go to File→“Get Photos and Videos”→“From Files and Folders” or press Ctrl+Shift+G/Shift-⌘-G, navigate to your photos, and then select them and click Get Media. (The other options in the “Get Photos and Videos from Files and Folders” dialog box—like fixing red eye and automatically suggesting photo stacks—are covered on The Photo Downloader.) Then follow the steps in the next bullet point for opening your photos in the Editor.

• From the Organizer, for files already in the Organizer: You can select an image that’s in the Organizer and open it in the Editor. To do so, in the Organizer, either click the file’s thumbnail and then press Ctrl+I/⌘-I; right-click the thumbnail and choose “Edit with Photoshop Elements Editor;” or click the little triangle to the right of the Fix tab (in the upper right of the Organizer window), and then select Full Photo Edit (if you’d rather go to Quick Fix [Adding Canvas] or Guided Edit [Guided Edit], then select Quick Photo Edit or Guided Photo Edit instead). You can also Shift-click or Ctrl-click/⌘-click to select multiple photos before using any of these commands, and all those photos go to the Editor.

  Tip

  When your photos get to the Editor, they should appear in the main editing space. If you don’t see anything there, go down to the Project bin, and, from the drop-down menu, choose “Show Files selected in Organizer.”

• From the Editor, for files anywhere on your computer. Go to File→Open or press Ctrl+O/⌘-O and select your file(s). You can also drop a file right onto the Editor’s main window and it’ll open, as long as you’re in Full Edit rather than Guided, or Quick Fix.

• From other programs. If you use another program to manage and organize your photos, like Lightroom, Aperture, or iPhoto, it’s best to set Elements up as your external editor for that program and send your files to the Editor that way, rather than trying to use Elements’ File→Open command. There are two reasons for this: First of all, your other program may be able to create and save version sets (File Formats Elements Understands) like the Organizer does, but it won’t be able to do that unless you send your files out for editing from within your other program. Also, the library file (the data the program stores about your photos) may be corrupted if you don’t handle it exactly the way it’s meant to be used. iPhoto’s library is particularly resentful of being poked and prodded from outside the program itself.

  The exact method for setting up an external editor depends on which program you’re using, but there’s typically a place to do that in the program’s preferences. In Windows, you probably get to them by going to Edit→Preferences, and on a Mac, it’s likely <Application name>→Preferences.

People who are new to Elements often get confused by the message shown in Figure 2-4, which appears in the Organizer when you leave a photo open in the Editor.

Figure 2-4. This red “locked” band just means that you left your photo open in the Editor when you came back to the Organizer. To unlock it so that you have access to it in the Organizer, switch back to the Editor and close the photo.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION: Picking the File Types That Elements Opens

How do I stop Elements from opening all my files?

Many people are dismayed to discover that once they install Elements, it opens every time they double-click any kind of graphics file—whether they want the file to open in Elements or not. You can fix that easily enough:

In Windows: First, find a file of the type you want to change (like a JPEG, for example). Then, right-click the closed file’s icon and, if you’re using Windows 7 or Vista, select “Open with”→“Choose Default Program” from the pop-up menu. (If you’re in Windows XP, select Open With→Choose Program instead.) In the list that appears, select the program you want to use to open the file. Turn on the “Always use the selected program to open this kind of file” checkbox to set that program for all files of this type.

On a Mac: In the Finder, find a file of the type you want to change (like a JPEG, say). Click once to select it, and then press ⌘-I to bring up the Get Info window, which has lots of data about your file. Expand the “Open with” section by clicking the flippy triangle next to it, choose the program you want from the pull-down menu, and then click the Change All button. Voilà—from now on, those kinds of files will open in the program you chose.

Working with PDF Files

If you open a PDF file in Elements, you’ll see the Import PDF dialog box (Figure 2-5), which gives you lots of options for how Elements treats your file. You can choose to import whole pages or just the images on the pages, import multiple pages (if the PDF is more than one page long), and choose the color mode (Selecting a Color Mode) and the resolution of the imported files, as well as whether you want Elements to use anti-aliasing (The Magic Wand).