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If you’re like me you’ve taken tons of photos with your digital camera and now they are all stowed away somewhere on the hard drive of your Mac. Does sound like you? Are your photos in need organizing and editing but you don’t know where to start? Since I have been there I hope to provide some advice to help you get started in digital photo editing with Adobe Photoshop Elements Mac Version 4.0.

To begin with you need some digital photo editing software. I would recommend Adobe Photoshop Elements Mac Version 4.0, which is now available for the Mac. It is compatible with G-series as well as the new Intel Macs. Photoshop Elements is based on the market-leading professional Adobe Photoshop software. Aimed at the home digital photo enthusiast, elements performs basic photo editing tasks quickly and easily and there are also many sophisticated Photoshop features available to you at the click of a mouse.

The user interface is well laid out and easy to understand; Elements includes a great feature for the digital photo editing beginner, the use of descriptive icons, where you hover your mouse over an icon and message pops up with a description of its function. Organizing your photos is a snap as well since Elements allows you to manage, sort, delete and view your picture collection in a variety of different ways including face tagging and keyword tagging. There is also an exhaustive list of file properties for each of your images so misplacing photos will be a thing of the past. Since there is a partnership between Adobe and Kodak you the opportunity to share your photos online, print greetings cards, custom calendars or photo books. A quick note: before you eject the install cd you want to make sure you copy the Goodies folder to your hard drive – it contains a huge variety of frames, backgrounds and extras to play around with.

Quick Fix allows you to execute basic editing functions which can correct the most common digital photo flaws. With a few clicks of the mouse smart fix and auto red-eye removal easily gives you a photo that is ready to print. Some more handy functions include the skin tone adjustment tool, which makes skin tones appear more natural and the straighten tool which allows you to straighten and crop crooked photos. A couple of the more advanced features include the magic selection brush and magic extractor tool. Using the magic selection brush you can scribble on an object and, providing there is enough contrast between it and the background, Elements will select it for you. The magic extractor is an even better tool; it is easy to use and allows you to separate objects from the background of an image in seconds with great accurately.

So, for the beginner or even the more advanced user, if you want to edit your photos quickly and easily with very little work, and finally remove them from your hard drive, Adobe Photoshop Elements Mac Version 4.0 offers all the functionality you’ll ever need and is excellent value for money.

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