Before

After

The following steps are effective for most images using Photoshop Elements.  There is much more that can be done.

Cropping:

• Open the JPG file of the original photo.
• File > SaveAS the image, give it a meaningful name, and change the file type to Photoshop's PSD format.  Do not ever edit the original!
• Click the Zoom tool to explore the image with any combination of: clicking on the image, click on "Actual Pixels" button, and click on "Fit to Screen" button.  Before doing the next step, click the "Fit on Screen" button that shows when the Zoom tool is active.
• Crop the image by first clicking the Crop tool.  Hold down the mouse at one corner and drag out a rectangle.  Adjust the rectangle.  Double-click inside the rectangle to complete the process.  A useful option for prints is to type in dimensions in the parameter section for the crop tool to force a height to width ratio of 8 to 10, for example.

Color and Contrast Enhancement:

• Enhance > Adjust Brightness/Contrast > Levels ... (not the Brightness/Contrast).  While in this dialog box, you adjust the histogram range to enhance the image by sliding controls affecting the highlights, midtones and shadows. (See Figure 3 below)
• Move the rightmost triangle under the histogram to the left to adjust the highlights.  In general, slide it to where the histogram is beginning to approach zero.  In this case, that is about 185 (notice the numbers that change).
• Move the left slider triangle a little to the right about to 10 to adjust the dark area.  In general, slide it just past where the histogram becomes positive.
• Move the middle slider triangle to adjust the midtones.  This example doesn't require much movement.
• Click OK.  (FYI: this will stretch out the histogram to cover the full range from dark to light, which is what Ansel Adams touted as the desired Zone System.  See Figure 4 below.)
• If you do not like the results, click on the "Step Back (edit undo)" button.  In fact, you generally want to bounce back and forth with Step Back and Step Forward to compare the change with what you had before.  In addition, you should zoom in and compare the changes, particularly if the photo was taken in very low light.
• Enhance > Adjust Color > Hue/Saturation.  In this dialog box, move the center slider on Saturation a little to the right to about 10 or 15 to add some color richness.  Beware that increasing the Saturation much more will likely cause some unwanted artifacts.

Fig. 3. Initial Levels Histogram showing where the sliders could be moved.

Fig. 4.  Levels Histogram after the adjustment. This will not be displayed in this example.

Sharpen (don't do this if you want a soft mood)  This is generally the last thing you do to the image.

• If you had any selections open, do a Select > Deselect before doing the following sharpening.  You should also flatten any layers if you are using layers.
• To Sharpen the image for printing and web pages, use Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask  ( or simply Sharpen).  The Unsharp Mask is used to sharpen, but you might not figure that out from the name.  In the dialog box, move the Amount slider between 100% to 200% (usually), the Radius slider to 1.0, and the Threshold about 5 or 10.  The precise meaning of these parameters is a long story.
• Click OK.
• Bounce back and forth with Step Back and Step Forward to compare the change with what you had before.  Notice the necklace on the woman in the center.

Save the work - this is still the PSD file.
 

Prepare to Print:

• To ready an image for a print at a photo printing store, open the PSD image file (if it is not currently open) and do a File > SaveAS.
• Change the file type to be JPG.
• Change the name if you want.
• When you click on the Save button, the JPG dialog box appears.  For printing, be sure to save at the highest quality possible with the least compression.  That is a Quality of 12 in the JPG dialog box for Photoshop Elements, with the slider all the way to the right.
• Click OK.

Prepare for the Web or Email:

• To ready an image for a web page or an email, open the PSD image file (if it is not already open).
• Image > Resize.  In that dialog box, enter a number for the Pixel Dimensions at the top for either the Height or the Width (but not both).  For the example shown on this page, I set the Height to 420 pixels.  VIP: make sure that there is a check mark at the bottom next to "Constrain Properties", and also a check next to "Resample" usually with the Bicubic option.  Do not try to resize an image to make it larger.  It will be larger, but it will usually look like crap.
• You may want to sharpen the image as I did above.  The sharpening done above was at the higher resolution, thus one pixel of sharpening at the high resolution might not be visible in this smaller resized image.  In general, sharpening should be the last thing done and it is resolution dependent.
• Save this image in a different file via File > SaveAS and change the file type to be JPG.
• Change the name to something different from the printable file.
• When you click on the Save button, the JPG dialog box appears.  For web pages and email, you want a fair amount of compression so that the file size is civilized.  Move the Quality slider to the 6 to 8 range for most web images.  As you move the slider, you will see the file size and an approximate download time for a 56K phone modem.
• Click OK.