Basics

• When you open Photoshop Elements 5, the first thing you will see is the welcome screen. This is your starting point. You can open a photo from it, open the Organizer to browse photos or create a new document. In fact, it has five buttons labeled Product Overview, View and Organize Photos, Quickly Fix Photos, Edit and Enhance Photos and Make Photo Creations. Do all these things from menus later, but if you want to go directly to the Organizer, for example, here is a quick way to do it. If you do not want to use it, just close it and go directly to Elements 5. Open a photo by clicking File > Open > Save. Click File > Save As to edit.
  
  

Size and Fix

• If the image is directly from a digital camera or a scan, it probably will not be the correct size. So, working with the copy, use Resize. Click Image > Resize > Image Size to change the dimensions. For a standard horizontal photo, set width for 11 inches and the height will set itself or set height to 8.5 inches and the width will adjust to it. Since you plan to print this photo, the important number is Resolution. Set it at a minimum to "200" dots per inch, although 300 dpi is standard. Next, fix the tone using Levels in an Adjustment Layer. Click Window > Layer. Click and hold the little half-white and half-black circle and click Levels. The pop-up window will have a Histogram (bar graph) that shows the levels from black to white from left. It also has an Auto button and three eyedroppers. Select the right eyedropper for whites, find the whitest section of the image and click. Use the left eyedropper, find the darkest area and click.
  
  

Contact Sheets

• While you probably will use the Organizer to view groups of photos onscreen, you also can print Contact Sheets that contain thumbnail images of the photos. This is a tremendous asset for Elements users because they can have Contact Sheets from which to select images to print for themselves and they can show them to family members and friends for them to choose prints, too. To use Contact Sheets, you can select an entire folder, current open documents or selections in the Organizer. Click File > Contact Sheet. Select how many images you want on a page. When you select them (and click "OK"), Elements will create a Contact Sheet for you with all the images spread out over however many pages are needed and import the images with file names. Then Flatten the image and print. Click Layers > Flatten.