Chapter 13. Working with Photoshop Elements

Adobe Photoshop Elements and Adobe Premiere Elements are designed to work together and let you seamlessly combine digital photography and video editing. You can spice up your video projects with title images or customized menu templates created in Photoshop Elements, or build slide show presentations in Photoshop Elements, and then use parts of them in Premiere Elements for further editing.

To work on the following exercises, you must have Photoshop Elements installed on your system. In this lesson, you will learn several techniques for using Photoshop Elements together with Premiere Elements. Specifically, you will learn how to do the following:

• Access albums created in Photoshop Elements in Premiere Elements

• Paste images into Premiere Elements

• Create a Photoshop file optimized for video

• Edit a Photoshop image from within Premiere Elements

This lesson will take approximately 1.5 hours.

A cool text title created in Photoshop Elements for use in Premiere Elements.

Viewing the Completed Movie Before You Start

To see what you’ll be creating, let’s take a look at the completed movie.

1. Before you begin, make sure that you have correctly copied the Lesson13 folder from the DVD in the back of this book onto your computer’s hard disk. See “Copying the Classroom in a Book Files” in the Getting Started section of this book.
2. Navigate to the Lesson13 folder, and double-click Lesson13_Movie.mov to play the movie in your default application for watching QuickTime files.

Getting Started

You’ll now open Photoshop Elements 9 and import the files needed for the Lesson13 project.

1. Launch Photoshop Elements.
2. In the Welcome screen, click the Organize button to open the Photoshop Elements Organizer.

   

3. If you’ve previously used Photoshop Elements, your Organizer may be displaying the photos in your current catalog. If this is the first time you’ve launched Photoshop Elements, you may receive a message asking if you would like to designate a location to look for your image files. Click No to work with an empty Organizer panel.
4. Choose File > Get Photos and Videos > From Files and Folders. Navigate to your Lesson13 folder and select—but do not open—the images subfolder. Then click Get Media. Photoshop Elements will import the photos.
5. If a message appears telling you that only the newly imported files will appear, click OK. In the Organizer, you should see nine thumbnail images of the kids who were shooting hoops in the video that you created. Thumbnail images are small versions of the full-size photos. You’ll be working with the full-size photos later in this lesson.
6. Under Albums in the Tagging window, click the Create new album or album group button (), and choose New Album. Premiere Elements opens the Album Details dialog.

   

7. In the Photoshop Elements menu, choose Edit > Select All to select the nine new images. Then click on any one image, drag all the images into the Items window on the right, and release the pointer.

   

8. In the Album Name field in the Album Details dialog, type Kids Shooting Hoops.
9. On the lower left of the Album Details dialog, click Done to save the album.

As you may recall from Lesson 4, Premiere Elements and Photoshop Elements use the same Organizer, which Premiere Elements can access from the Media view in the Edit workspace. You’ll review how to access the newly created Kids Shooting Hoops album from Premiere Elements in a later exercise.

Using the Edit Videos Command in Photoshop Elements

You learned back in Lesson 1 that you can create a project in Premiere Elements after selecting video files in the Organizer. Similarly, you can create a Premiere Elements project from images using the same technique. Let’s review that quickly in this exercise.

Briefly, if you have a project open in Premiere Elements when you use this technique, the Organizer will add the selected files to the current project at the end of the current Sceneline or Timeline. If no project is open, the Organizer will create a new project, which is the workflow you will follow in this exercise. Accordingly, if you have a project open in Premiere Elements, please close it (after saving if necessary) before starting this exercise.

To sort images in the Organizer, Photoshop Elements uses the date and time information embedded in the image file by the digital camera. In the Organizer menu, choosing to show the oldest files first by selecting Date (Newest First) enables you to create a slide show in chronological order when transferring the photos to Premiere Elements.

1. Right-click the first image (Kevin_Semih.jpg) and choose Show Properties. Properties view opens to Properties - General view, which displays the name of the image, and also details the file size, the date the photo was taken, and its location on your hard disk. The date the picture was taken is also displayed below the image thumbnail in the Photo Browser if you select the Details check box at the upper right of the Photo Browser. To show filenames in the Photo Browser, choose View > Show File Names. Click the Close icon () at the upper right to close the Properties view.

   

2. Press and hold the Ctrl/Command key, and then in the Photo Browser click the first five images in landscape mode—Kevin_Semih.jpg, Kevin_Semih2.jpg, Paul_soccer.jpg, Kevin_soccer.jpg, and Semih_Paul.jpg—to select them. A blue outline appears around the thumbnail to indicate a selected image. In the next step, Photoshop Elements will process only the selected images.

   Note

   Before performing the next step, make sure you do not have a project open in Premiere Elements. Otherwise, the images will be placed in the open file.

3. In the Fix panel, click the downward triangle on the top right of the Fix tab, and choose Edit Videos. A dialog may appear informing you that the files will be inserted at the end of your Timeline and that the Premiere Elements defaults will be used. Click OK. If Premiere Elements is not already open, it will launch automatically.

   

4. In the Premiere Elements New Project dialog, type Lesson13_Start in the name field. Click the Browse button. In the Browse For Folder dialog, navigate to the Lesson13 folder located on your hard disk and select it. Click OK to close the Browse For Folder dialog.

   

5. If necessary, click the Change Settings button and change the preset to NTSCDV-Standard 48kHz. Click OK to close the Setup dialog, and then click OK to close the New Project dialog.

   A Premiere Elements project is created, and the images you selected in Photoshop Elements are now visible in the Organize view of the Tasks panel. They have also been added to Project view and placed in the Sceneline (or Timeline) of the My Project panel. The first image is displayed in the Monitor panel. In the Sceneline of the My Project panel you’ll see all images as individual scenes.

   

6. With all scenes selected in the Sceneline, choose Clip > Group to place the entire group onto one target that can be moved as a single clip. Then choose Clip > Ungroup to treat each still image as its own scene in the Sceneline.

   Note

   Although you might assume that the total length of the slide show is equal to the number of images multiplied by the default duration for still images, it’s actually less than that. This is because Premiere Elements inserts the transition effect between the images by overlapping the clips by the default length of the transition effect. Note that you can change the default still image duration and transition duration in the Premiere Elements Preferences panel. See the section “Working with Project Preferences” in Lesson 2 for more details.

7. Press the spacebar to play your project. Premiere Elements uses the default duration of five seconds for each still image and applies a cross-dissolve as the default transition between each clip.
8. Return to the Organizer by clicking the Elements Organizer button at the bottom of your screen in the Windows taskbar (if it’s visible) or by holding down the Alt/Command key and pressing Tab until you see the icon for the Elements Organizer. Release the Alt/Command key and the Elements Organizer opens. If all nine images aren’t shown, click the Kids Shooting Hoops album at the upper right to display the contents of that album.
9. Click to select only one image, the one named Kevin.jpg, and then choose Edit > Edit with Premiere Elements. Click OK to close the Edit with Premiere Elements dialog if it appears. Your open application should switch to Premiere Elements, and the image will be placed at the end of your Sceneline or Timeline.

   Note

   Because you’re sending only a single image from Photoshop Elements to Premiere Elements, no transition has been placed on the image. In this case, if you wanted to add a transition, you would have to do so manually, but do not add one at this time. See Lesson 7 for more information about adding transitions.

   

10. Choose File > Save As and save this project file in your Lesson13 folder as Lesson13_Work.prel.

Loading an Album from Photoshop Elements

Using the Edit Videos command in Photoshop Elements will not only add the images to Project view, but also place them in the Sceneline. At times, you may want more flexibility, or you may want to add images from an album after you’ve already started a project in Premiere Elements. To do this, you can open an album created in Photoshop Elements in Premiere Elements. You learned how to create and open albums back in Lesson 4; here’s a brief refresher course.

1. In Premiere Elements, click the Organize tab to open the Organize workspace in Media view.
2. In the Filter by: list box, scroll down and select the desired album—in this case, the Kids Shooting Hoops album that you created earlier in the chapter.

   

   Premiere Elements displays the album’s contents in Organizer view.

   

From the Organizer you can drop assets directly onto the Sceneline or the Monitor panel to add them to your project. Assets added from the Organizer will also be automatically added to Project view and tagged with a project-specific keyword tag. For more information on catalogs, keyword tags, and the Organizer view, see the section “Tagging in the Organizer” in Lesson 4, “Organizing Your Content.”

Creating a New Photoshop File Optimized for Video

The first part of this lesson focused on importing image files from Photoshop Elements into Premiere Elements. In this exercise, you’ll create a new still image, modify it in Photoshop Elements, and then use it in your Premiere Elements project.

One of the more common workflows between the two programs is to create a project title in Premiere Elements, edit it in Photoshop Elements, and then deploy the title in Premiere Elements. That’s what you’ll do in this and the following exercise.

1. Make sure you’re in Photoshop Elements. Choose File > New > Blank File. In the New file dialog, type title. Then click the Preset list box and choose File & Video.

   

2. Click the Size list box and choose NTSC DV, which matches the project you should have open in Premiere Elements. If you’re working on a different project, choose the size that matches the resolution of your Premiere Elements project. If you don’t know or have forgotten, click Edit > Project Settings > General in Premiere Elements to view your project settings.

   

3. Click OK to create the file, and then click OK to close the dialog regarding using a video monitor.
4. Now let’s save the file in the Lesson13 folder. Choose File > Save As, and in the Save As dialog, check to make sure that you named the file Title.psd, then navigate to your Lesson13 folder and click Save.

Customizing a Title in Photoshop Elements

Now you have your Photoshop file. Next, you’ll add the background that you captured in the previous lesson, customize the background, and then add some text.

A. Font B. Style C. Font Size D. Alignment E. Color F. Create Warped Text.

1. In the Editor, make sure Full mode is selected on the extreme upper-right side of the interface. If necessary, click the Full button to choose that mode.
2. In the top menu, choose View > Guides to hide the title and action safe guides, which you don’t need because you’re not producing a DVD with this project, or otherwise producing a file that will be viewed on a television set.

   

3. In Photoshop Elements, choose File > Open. The Open dialog opens. Navigate to the Lesson13 folder on your hard disk, choose Walking_off.bmp, and click Open to load the image into Photoshop Elements.
4. In the Photoshop Elements menu, choose Select > All to select the image, and then choose Edit > Copy to copy the image to the clipboard.
5. Click Title.psd to make it active and choose Edit > Paste to paste the copied Walking_off image into Title.psd. If you see an error message about the background of the image being locked, click OK to enable the paste.
6. You’ll need to adjust the size of the pasted image to fit Title.psd, which you accomplish by clicking and dragging any of the eight small squares on the edges and sides of the bounding box. Try to position the image so that the kids on the left and right extremes are both as visible as possible. Then click the Commit Current Operation check mark on the lower right to set the adjustment.

   

7. On the upper-right side of the Photoshop Elements interface, in the EFFECTS tab, click the second icon from the right (), click the drop-down list, and then choose the Vintage Photo effect.

   

8. Drag the Vintage Photo effect onto Title.psd and release. Photoshop Elements applies the effect to the image.

   

9. Drag the edges of the bounding box in the Title.psd image outward to exclude the blue edges from each side. Then click the Commit Current Operation check mark on the lower right to set the adjustment.

   

10. Let’s add a text title to Title.psd. Click the Horizontal Type Text () tool in the Tools panel.
11. In the Text tool options bar, choose the One Stroke Script LET font, Plain style at 72 pts, center text alignment, and set the font color to Pure Red Orange. If you don’t have that font on your system, choose a different font that delivers the same je ne sais quoi.

    

    

12. Click the image just beneath and slightly to the left of the basketball net, and type Kids Shooting (carriage return) Hoops.

    

13. Click the Move tool () in the toolbox to return to the selection arrow. Position the text in the horizontal center of the frame. Now let’s make the text more legible. To do this, right-click the text box and choose Edit Layer Style.
14. Let’s make several adjustments in the Style Settings dialog:

    

    • Click the Drop Shadow box to add a drop shadow.

    • Add an inner glow by clicking the Glow check box, then clicking the Inner check boxes, and then conforming their settings to the figure.

    • Add a bevel by clicking the Bevel check box and otherwise make sure that your settings match those in the figure.

    • Add a stroke by clicking the Stroke check box and otherwise make sure that your settings match those in the figure.

    • Click OK to close the dialog.

    

15. Much better. Now let’s warp the text around “Walking off.” Double-click the text box to select all text, and then click the Create Warped Text icon on the text tools option bar.

    

16. In the Warp Text dialog, click the Style drop-down list and choose Arc. Then Click OK to close the dialog.

    

17. Choose File > Save to save Title.psd.
18. Switch to Premiere Elements by clicking the Premiere Elements button at the bottom of your screen in the Windows taskbar or by holding down the Alt/Command key and pressing Tab until you see the icon for Premiere Elements. Release the Alt/Command key and Premiere Elements opens.
19. Now let’s import the file into Premiere Elements. Click the Organize Tab, then the Get Media icon, and then Get Videos/Photos/Audio from Files and folders. The Add Media dialog opens. Navigate to the Lesson13 folder, click to select Title.psd and click Open (Windows)/Import (Mac OS). Premiere Elements imports the file and displays it in the Media workspace.

    

20. In the Timeline, drag Title.psd to the beginning of the movie, waiting for about two seconds for the other images to shift to the right. Then release the pointer. If Premiere Elements opens the SmartFix dialog, click No. Premiere Elements will insert Title.psd at the start of the movie and shift all other content to the right.

    

21. Save your work. Your title should look like the one shown in the Monitor panel in the next figure.

    

Editing a Photoshop Image in Premiere Elements

You can edit a Photoshop Elements image (or any image for that matter) while you’re working in Premiere Elements by using the Edit in Photoshop Elements command. Changes you make to the image will be updated automatically, even if the clip is already placed in your Sceneline or Timeline. Let’s add a bit of color to the currently drab title.

1. Right-click the Title.psd clip in the Timeline and choose Edit in Adobe Photoshop Elements. The Title.psd file opens in Photoshop Elements. Click OK if the dialog discussing the video monitor opens.
2. If necessary, click the Move tool () in the toolbox to choose the selection arrow. Then right-click the text box and choose Edit Layer Style.
3. In the Style Settings dialog, click the Inner Glow check box to deselect that style setting. Click OK to close the dialog.

   

4. Choose File > Save, overwriting the Title.psd file in the Lesson13 folder. Close the file, and then switch to Premiere Elements.

   The changes made to the Title.psd file in Photoshop Elements have automatically been updated in the Premiere Elements project. This is very useful because it eliminates the need to reimport an image file every time a change is made.

5. Click the top of the Timeline to select it, and then press the Home key to place the current-time indicator at the beginning of the Timeline. Press the spacebar to play your project. When you’re finished reviewing, save your work.

   

Congratulations! You’ve finished the lesson on working with Photoshop Elements. You’ve discovered how to get photos from the Organizer and how to enhance them using the Editor. You’ve also learned how to create a title in Photoshop Elements for use in Premiere Elements.

This is the last lesson in this book. We hope that you have gained confidence in using Premiere Elements 9, developed some new skills, and increased your knowledge of the product and the many creative things you can accomplish with it.

But this book is just the beginning. You can learn more by studying the Premiere Elements 9 Help system that is built into the application. Simply choose Help > Adobe Premiere Elements Help and browse or use the search functionality to find what you need. Also, don’t forget to look for tutorials, tips, and expert advice on the Adobe Systems website at www.adobe.com.

Review questions

1. What’s the best way to make sure that an image you create in Photoshop Elements matches the video that you’ll be adding it to?

2. How can you edit an image included in a Premiere Elements project in Photoshop Elements?

3. What are the advantages of editing your images in Photoshop Elements?

Review answers

1. Make sure that you create the file using the same size as your video project.

2. Right-click the image in the Premiere Elements Timeline and choose Edit in Photoshop Elements.

3. Photoshop Elements has many more still image effects and several more advanced text-related adjustments.