My 7 Favorite Photoshop Elements Guided Edits

with 20 Comments

Photoshop Elements Guided Edits are fast, fun, and cool. Here are my seven favorite Guided Edits. It’s worth your time to check them out.

High Key
Give your photo a soft pastel look with this Guided Edit. You can choose color or black and white. The effect is pretty strong, but when you return to Expert mode, you can reduce the effect by lowering the opacity of the high key layer in the Layers panel.
high-key-baby

Tilt Shift
This effect blurs out all but a strip of your photo, allowing you to define the focus you want. Click and drag the gradient as often as you need to find the look you want. Press the Shift key as you drag the gradient if you want the line to be straight. Again, you can make adjustments on the layer mask when you return to Expert mode.

tilt-shift

Lomo Camera
There’s a Guided Edit called Old Fashioned Photo, but for an old, artistic look, I prefer the Lomo Camera Effect. Click the button, and you get an instant Lomo Camera look. You can choose whether or not to add a black vignette.

lomo-camera-bougainvilea

 

Low Key
You can get a slightly different old fashioned look with Low Key. I really like what it did with this bright airplane photo! If you prefer black and white, you have that option, as well.

low-key-color

Saturated Slide Film
Need a bit more color? This effect will pump a little more color into your photo. The more you click the button, the stronger the effect. The photo below was washed out, so I applied this effect to make the warm tones of the wood and rust pop a bit more.

saturated-slide-film

Picture Stack
This effect is really fun! Put one photo inside four, eight, or twelve pictures—your choice. I don’t care for the white outline they use, so I change it when I get back to Expert mode. To do this, locate all the transparent and white layers in the Layers panel and click on the visibility icon to hide them. Select all the black layers and add your own Stroke outline layer style. However, to make this work, you must have a 3rd party Inner Stroke outline layer style, since Photoshop Elements only provides Outer Stroke outline layer styles. Plus members can download an Inner Stroke layer style in the membership area. If you’re not a Plus member, sign up—it’s free!

Picture-Stack-Yuma-prison

Out of Bounds
This effect is a always a favorite. There’s just something intriguing about seeing part of your photo appear to jump right outside the edge of the frame!
Watch my YouTube videos on how to achieve the out of bounds look and how to manipulate the layers on a scrapbook page:

out-of-bounds

The Guided Edits in Photoshop Elements are there to make it easy for you to create a fast effect, so take advantage of them now and then. They’ll add a bit of punch to your photos and spice up your scrapbook pages!

20 Responses

  1. Brenda Suplita
    | Reply

    Great tips…can’t wait to use them.

  2. Sharon Horswill
    | Reply

    I’m looking forward to trying these, thank you. I’ve shared this post on the Digi Scrapping Divas group on Facebook.

    • Linda Sattgast
      | Reply

      Thank you, Sharon! That’s sweet of you!

  3. Shirl/Grambie
    | Reply

    It is so nice of you to give us these wonderful tips when using PSE. It is because of tips from you when your staff that I am able to do a lot of scrapbooking. I am really enjoying this INSD with you. Hugs and kisses. 😉

    • Linda Sattgast
      | Reply

      Yay! I’m glad you’re enjoying the party!

  4. Elaine Hooker
    | Reply

    Thank you for the great tips! I’ve been looking for the Inner Stroke Style that you referenced for the picture stack. Can you please tell me where to find it? I love all the examples you’ve shown and can hardly wait to try them out!

  5. Sharron
    | Reply

    Wonderful! Thank you, Linda.

  6. Diane W
    | Reply

    These are great tips. Can’t wait to try them. Is there a way to save them to my computer?

    • Jen White
      | Reply

      Hi Diane. Great question. You have a few options.
      • Copy/paste all the info you want to save into another document on your computer.
      • Save the entire webpage on your computer. This is generally done in the menu bar of your browser.
      • Save the page in your browser’s bookmarks.

  7. Mungo
    | Reply

    Great tips, thank you – that out of bounds has to be my favourite

  8. Eileen Williams
    | Reply

    Does Photoshop have Guided Edits?

    • Linda Sattgast
      | Reply

      Unfortunately, no. They are not available in Photoshop, though they can all be done manually.

  9. Margie
    | Reply

    So interesting, thanks so much!

  10. Cndy
    | Reply

    Like theses tips.

  11. Jessie Trotter
    | Reply

    I have PSE 8. Are these guided edits from PSE 11? If so, it would be great to know some workarounds.

    I already have something I think DS did on “out of bounds”, but I don’t know how to do the other interesting effects.

    Thanks for all you do!

    Jessie 🙂

    • Linda Sattgast
      | Reply

      You’ll have to check your version to see which ones are available. I know some of these are more recent than version 8.

      Photoshop Elements 11 is worth getting just for the easy loading of Actions and Styles. Perhaps you could drop a hint for a gift for your birthday or a holiday. 🙂

      • Jessie Trotter
        | Reply

        Okay, Linda, I got PSE 11 for Mother’s Day! Yeah!

        Now I really need your “Get Organized Now” class which is not available right now (sad face! Until it’s offered again, can you point me to some helpful hints maybe on the blog? Using PSE 11’s “organizer” I think I can get my personal photos into shape. However, I had so many kits from DS and a few other places that were all mixed up in giant folders of (paper, elements, etc). I got so frustrated that I deleted all those massive folders and kept only my zipped folders and put them into folders by company that I got them from.

        Now I’m afraid to start unzipping them all until I have some type organizing plan…..PLEASE HELP…I’d be happy to purchase your class even an older version.

        Thanks for all you do!

        • Linda Sattgast
          | Reply

          Congratulations! How exciting!

          Organization is a BIG topic, which is why we take 9 weeks to do it in my class. I can tell you how I organize my kits, but you need to think through how you like to access things and come up with your own plan. I have a folder called kits. In it I have a Premier folder where I put all my Premier kits. They are in order because of the numbers. I think of them that way, so it works.

          The rest of my kits I put in the kit folder by designer. The designer name is first on every kit so that all her kits fall together. I find it much easier to find things that way, and I tend to have my favorite designers that I access often—like Susie Roberts! I use her kits a lot, so it’s helpful to have all the kit folders lining up alphabetically together.

          Think through the ideal way you would like to access the kits—based on how you think and work—and use that system. Best of luck!

  12. laura
    | Reply

    These are great tips. Thank you.

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