Frome Wessex Camera Club

Digital Imaging for Beginners Lesson 4
Using Adobe Photoshop Elements (v1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0)
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There is a very useful little facility within the "Enhance" Menu called Variations. This allows you to make small (or large) adjustments to your picture which can be more difficult to make using the normal adjustment facilities. You can change the overall tint of the shadows, mid-tones or highlights, by any of 6 levels of adjustment, increase or decrease the colour saturation (also by any of 6 levels), lighten shadows or darken highlights (also by any of 6 levels). There is the added advantage of allowing you to see the effects of your changes, and also a system called "Clipping" which shows when you have over-done any change.

The basic Variations screen looks like this:-

Working from top to bottom, the first two pictures show the Original (Before) and Current Pick (After) versions of your picture. Next are the buttons for Shadows, Mid-tones, Highlights and Saturation; under these buttons is a slide, going from Fine on the left to Coarse on the right – this slide indicates the strength of your adjustment, the default being the middle of the slide - I find that using the second or third mark is usually plenty; next is the Show Clipping button, which, when ticked shows when you have over-done the adjustment.

When either of the Shadows, Mid-tones or Highlights buttons is chosen, there are six possible adjustments you may make, i.e. More Green, More Yellow, More Cyan, More Red, More Blue or More Magenta. A further picture (in the middle of the other six) is the Current Pick, showing the current state of the picture. When the Saturation button is chosen, there are only two adjustments you can make, i.e. Less or More Saturation. The other three pictures are where you may Lighten or Darken certain elements of your picture, depending on which button (Shadows, Mid-tones or Highlights) is chosen.

Now load one of your pictures into Elements. Click on Enhance>Variations and a screen similar to the one shown above will appear. Click on the Shadows button and use your mouse to slide the Fine/Coarse slider to the third mark on the scale (i.e. one mark to the left of the Default setting).

Using your mouse, click on one or more of the colour variation pictures and look at the result on the Current Pick picture. To reverse a variation, click on the picture exactly opposite to the one you originally clicked (i.e. if you clicked on More Yellow, to reverse the action, click on More Blue). To Reset all your adjustments to the start, hold down the Alt key and the Cancel button (top right) will change to Reset. Click on this to Reset.

I find the most useful operation in the Variations screen is to make shadows lighter or highlights darker. It is sometimes difficult to do this in other screens unless you make (sometimes) difficult selections. So let’s try this in Variations:

Click on the Shadows button at the top of the screen. Set the Fine/Coarse slider to the third mark on the scale and click on the picture called Lighter; you should see the Current Pick picture lighten up. Now click on Darker twice (once to return to your starting position, and once to make the shadows darker). Play with the Fine/Coarse slider to see the how it effects your picture. Remember, if you want to return to your previous position, click on the opposite picture.

Click on the Highlights button and carry out a similar exercise to above.

If the Lighter or Darker picture shows a multi-coloured overlay on any part of the picture, this means you have gone too far; this overlay is known as Clipping; simply reverse the last command to make the overlay disappear.

You can also lighten or darken the mid-tones by clicking on the Mid-tones button, and use the Lighter or Darker options, but this is done much easier in the Levels option (Enhance>Brightness/Contrast>Levels).

When you have carried out all the adjustments, click on OK (top right) to apply the adjustments to your main picture. As with all adjustments, if you don’t like what you see on the main picture, simply click on Edit>Undo or move a step back in History.

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