{"id":58392,"date":"2025-09-23T11:45:55","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T18:45:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/?p=58392"},"modified":"2025-09-22T18:46:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T01:46:08","slug":"tutorial-tuesday-photoshop-elements-253","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/2025\/09\/tutorial-tuesday-photoshop-elements-253\/","title":{"rendered":"Tutorial Tuesday (Photoshop Elements)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guided Edit: Old Fashioned Photo<\/strong><\/p>\n

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You probably already know this about me… if I’m going to scrap lift a layout, I’m going to make it as close to a twin as possible, but putting my own touch on it. And this month’s Scrap Lift Challenge<\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/span> is going to be no different. The layout Alexis<\/strong> has chosen is this one by AmaneseFe<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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I have a huge folder of photos of children I’ve selected from Pixabay<\/strong>, so choosing which ones to use wasn’t too big a problem. The first hurdle to cross is to recreate the creamy, not-quite-sepia look Amanese<\/strong> has given her photos. So I played around a bit… This is the first photo I chose to edit. Isn’t he just so handsome?<\/p>\n

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I could have used an Action<\/strong>, but then I couldn’t share a method with you for getting there without one, so I went to the Guided Edits<\/strong> and looked at the For Fun<\/strong> edits. The Old Fashioned Photo<\/strong> looked promising.<\/p>\n

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I tried all three of the Options<\/strong>, Newspaper<\/strong>, Urban<\/strong> and Vivid<\/strong>, and decided I liked Vivid<\/strong> best. This was the result of one click on the button. It’s a good black-and-white image, but it doesn’t have that creamy taupe effect.<\/p>\n

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So I clicked on the bar that says Add Hue\/Saturation<\/strong>. And this happened. It’s TOO BROWN! But I can fix that! The dialog box shows the defaults the Edit<\/strong> uses. There’s room to make adjustments. (I could pretty much have chosen ANY colour, not just brown, by moving that top slider in either direction.) The labels are H<\/strong> = Hue<\/strong>, S<\/strong> = Saturation<\/strong> and L<\/strong> =Lightness<\/strong>. Let’s see where I end up.<\/p>\n

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All I did was drop the Saturation<\/strong> down from 25<\/strong> to 7<\/strong>. Now there’s a lovely hint of brown, but not too much. I’ve gone as far as I can with the Guided Edit<\/strong>, so I went down to the bottom right of the workspace and clicked on Next<\/strong>. (I cropped too much out of the screenshot… so I added the content of that lower right corner onto this one.) Reminder: If you accidentally click on Cancel<\/strong>, you’ll be right back at Square One.<\/p>\n

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This interface opens, offering you choices. You can Save<\/strong>, Save As<\/strong> (for creating an edited copy, rather than Saving over top of your original), Continue Editing<\/strong> in Quick<\/strong> (a menu of simple automated edits) or Expert<\/strong>. We’re going to Continue Editing<\/strong> in Expert<\/strong> because I know what tweaks are needed. So I clicked that button, then Done<\/strong>, down at the bottom right.<\/p>\n

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You’ll see immediately that Elements<\/strong> has created an Edit layer<\/strong> in the Layers Panel<\/strong> above the original photo. I’ve turned the visibility of the original off, since I don’t intend to use that layer for anything. All the remaining adjustments will be on the topmost layer<\/strong><\/span>. I clicked Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Shadows\/Highlights<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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The default for this tool is to dramatically decrease the Shadows<\/strong> but leaving the Highlights<\/strong> and Contrast<\/strong> alone. Oy, that screenshot looks better at full size… Default settings are Lighten Shadows 35%<\/strong>, Darken Highlights 0%<\/strong> and Midtone Contrast 0%<\/strong>. I further Lighten<\/strong>ed Shadows<\/strong> to 39%<\/strong>, made no changes to Darken Highlights<\/strong> and brought up the Midtone Contrast<\/strong> to 12%<\/strong>. It’s coming along!<\/p>\n

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Next, I clicked Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Brightness\/Contrast<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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Oh, that’s better! Here, the defaults are Brightness 0<\/strong> and Contrast 0<\/strong>. I pushed the Brightness<\/strong> to 20<\/strong> and the Contrast<\/strong> to 5<\/strong>. That blows out the highlights a bit, as seen with Amanese<\/strong>‘s photos, while making his eyes brighter.<\/p>\n

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Last tweak, I promise! Again Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Levels<\/strong>. This is the only keyboard shortcut I have for you today, \ud83d\ude09 CTRL\/CMD>L<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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The defaults for this tool are Input Levels 0<\/strong>, 1.00<\/strong> and 255<\/strong>. Output Levels<\/strong> are 0<\/strong> and 255<\/strong>. I adjusted the Input<\/strong> top end to 241<\/strong> and tweaked both ends of the Output<\/strong>, to 18<\/strong> and 238<\/strong>. Now the image is soft, creamy, dreamy and very similar to those on the original layout.<\/p>\n

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Then I used all the same steps to edit the second photo. The lighting for the original is a bit different than Photo 1, so the results aren’t quite identical. That’s not a big deal, because I know I can get it there. Stay tuned for my Scrap Lift<\/strong> layout!<\/p>\n

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Over the weekend I went right over a cliff when I found a Downloads<\/strong> folder IN MY DOWNLOADS FOLDER<\/strong><\/span>! It was crammed full of zipped folders and photos. Overflowingly full! So I spent many hours going through it, finding all the GingerScraps<\/strong><\/span> folders, unzipping and organizing them. It was like Christmas! Sort of literally…. there were lots of Christmas kits in there. So now I have all these “new” kits to play with… and I’m looking forward to it! We’ll see how well I keep up with my downloads going forward. I know me, it’s going to be a challenge.<\/p>\n

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Guided Edit: Old Fashioned Photo You probably already know this about me… if I’m going to scrap lift a layout, I’m going to make it as close to a twin as possible, but putting my own touch on it. And this month’s Scrap Lift Challenge is going to be no different. The layout Alexis has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[229,102,284,92,62],"tags":[373],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-26 20:09:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"private","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58392"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58392"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58407,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58392\/revisions\/58407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}