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Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 3.0: A New
Version!
Part 8
Cookie Cutter Tool
This one is addictive. It lets you use custom shapes to crop.
For a long time, users have wanted to crop in a circle. Now you
can crop in any custom shape! Choose the Cookie Cutter
tool from the toolbox, choose your shape from the options
bar, and click and drag. It's that easy! Feather for a soft look,
or select and add a stroke. Note: if you don't
want the layer style to cover your photo, you need to select the
cropped shape, then make a new layer and apply the stroke and then
the layer style to the new layer. Remember, layer styles
affect all of the non-transparent pixels on a layer, so to only
apply the layer style to the stroke, the stroke must be on its
own layer.
  
Leading controls!
Even
if you're shaking your head wondering what that means, you will
be happy to know Elements 3.0 has it, because you have probably
run into line spacing problems many times in Elements 2.0. In Elements
2.0 you could not control the amount of space between lines of
text, but in Elements 3.0 you can!
 Leading
is a typesetting term referring to the lead strips that were placed
between the lines of letters to space the lines apart. When the
text tool is active, you'll find the leading control on the right
side of the options bar. Some fonts are perfectly spaced with the
leading set at Auto, but some will crowd, and some will be too
far apart. Being able to choose a new setting lets you space the
type to suit your needs. It works great for spacing for posters
or flyers are well as spacing a typeface that goes outside the
normal boundaries.
The top example is two lines of type in Scriptina at 24 pt. The
leading is set at Auto, and the two lines are crowded. You can
see how much better the bottom two lines in blue look. The same
Scriptina at 24 pt now has the leading set at 48. It adds some
breathing room.
To change the leading, either choose a new value from the popup
menu, type in a new value, or see the next section for a new trick!
Love that arrow dial!
The new arrow controls you will find on many dialogs
with names beside them works like this: hover the mouse over the
name until you see the pointing hand and a double-headed arrow,
then click and drag right or left to change the numbers on the
dial. It works in a lot of places so try it often!
 
Better color choices
In the options
bar, the color box that allows you to change the colors of text
or custom shapes now sports a small arrow that allows you to open
the color swatches palette as a popup palette for easy access.
You can choose any color loaded in the palette including custom
colors you have saved quickly and easily.
Clicking on the color
box still opens the system color picker. Clicking the More
Colors button will also open the color picker. Clicking
the options button opens the swatch palette menu with more options
to load other swatches or even save swatches.
Windows
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Sara Froehlich
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