Quick Editor: Tools overview

- [Narrator] Within the quick edit mode of the Elements editor, it's important to understand what each tool does, and how to set tool properties when you select a tool. So before we start making edits, let me just get you familiar with how these tools work. Now, I am starting here in the Elements organizer, because this is where all my photos live, so I'd like to choose a photo that I want to open in the editor. So I'm going to go with this image here of the ukulele, and with that selected I'm just going to click the editor button to open this image in the elements editor.

There we go. And I'm going to make sure that up at the top, I'm in the quick edit mode. So you can see here that we have the image open, and we're in the elements editor. Now over here on the left hand side, these are all of the tools that are available inside of the quick edit mode. And what I want to point out here is that in the quick edit mode, you can come up here in the upper left corner and choose what you want to view at any given point and time. So the After Only is going to show you your final edit.

So as you make your edits it's going to show you the edit that you made. Before Only is going to show you before the edits are made and then you can choose Before and After and that'll kind of split this into a double view here where you can see the before and after versions. So we'll just go ahead and for now keep it at after only. And then I'm going to click on my zoom tool, which is the very first tool up here at the top. Now the thing I want to point out here is that when you're working with these tools, down at the very bottom, currently I have the tool options chosen.

And what that means is that when I select a tool, this section here is going to show me the options that are available for that particular tool. And you'll notice that as you change tools, the options that are available change to reflect that particular tool. So the zoom tool is used for zooming in on your photo. The hand tool which is the second tool is used for kind of moving your image around, and kind of changing what part of the photo you're looking at.

Now the next tool here, this is what's called the quick selection tool, used for making quick selections in your image. The tool below that is your red eye removal tool, and we're going to talk a little bit later about a really great feature called Pet Eye, which is also helpful for removing that glow in a pet's eyes when you take pictures of them. We then have the whiten teeth tool, very very handy in a number of situations.

We have the straighten tool, and again as I choose these tools the options are showing up down here at the bottom. You have the type tool for adding type to your image, you have the spot healing brush tool for removing little pieces of dirt and blemishes in your image. And then we have the crop tool for cropping our image. And the move tool for moving content within your file. So those are the tools that we're going to be working with.

And the tools are very powerful and they're going to be critical in you achieving the result that you're looking for. So one of the things that gets a little tricky about Photoshop Elements when you're in the editor, is you have to be very cognoscente of which tool you have selected. A lot of times when people are having problems trying to make an edit, it's often because they forgot to select the appropriate tool for the edit they're trying to perform. So keep that in mind as we move forward and make further edits.

Alright, so now when you're making edits to an image, you'll know which tool to choose, and how to set the properties for each tool accordingly.