zoooooooooooom

[scorpio_witch]

I am a complete amateur and am stuck! I own an EOS 400D and use Photoshop Elements 7.

After taking a shot, I review the result and am able to zoom in and also to move the subject matter up/down or across, to keep the main subject in a central /rule of thirds position.

However, my Husband made a wonderful capture of a gannet recently at Bempton Cliffs; but when in the editing workspace of Photoshop I could only find how to zoom in. After a couple of clicks, the bird moved way too far to the right; and I cannot discover how to get the same effect as using the camera's zoom functions to re-position it. What am I missing or doing wrong?

Any suggestions would be gratefully received .

[OldBoy]

When the image is too large to fit the window, then there should be a position bar at the right sides and bottom of the window. By using these you can move the image to show what you want. Not sure if Elements 7 has the hand tool but if it has, select it and click on the image and you should be able to move the image in any direction. These only appear/or are active when you zoom in on a image.

[scorpio_witch]

Hello OldBoy! I am immensely grateful for your reply, as the content was spot on thank you. Clearly I had not zoomed in sufficiently for the bars to have appeared. Having followed your advice it worked a treat. However, at the risk of being a real pain, when I try to save the zoomed image, either as 'save' or 'save as', it always reverts back to the original size. Evidently I am still being rather dense.

Kind regards

Scorp

[chris-p]

When you zoom in on an image all you are doing is looking closer - all the image is still there.

If you want to make take a specific bit of an image and then enlarge it you need to use the crop tool. Click on the crop tool icon (see below) and drag a box around the area you want to keep. It will look something like this...



Then double click and the computer will physically remove the areas outside the box you've drawn with the crop tool.

[scorpio_witch]

Thanks Chris - that has worked a treat; not enlarged quite as much as I would have liked but now I know, I can play around and learn from this.

Isn't this place wonderful.

[chris-p]

That won't have enlarged it - thats the next step...

I don't have Elements 7 so I can't tell you the exact commands but it will be something like... Image menu > Image size.
You should get some sort of box which lets you put in a new size. You can often change the units (pixels, cm, inches or percentage). You should also get the choice of sampling systems - you want "Bicubic Smoother"

[GeoffWessex]

Close, Chris....... it's Image > Image Size > Resize.
Some very elementary questions there, Scorpio Witch...... perhaps you'd benefit from a decent book about Elements...... I recommend the Scott Kelby/Matt Kloskowski book "Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 for Digital Photographers". It's here at Amazon - other suppliers are available.

Frankly, you could scratch around in the dark on Elements forever and not get much done - I know, I've been there. In the end I did some evening classes and got a couple of books!

[OldBoy]

Originally Posted by scorpio_witch

Thanks Chris - that has worked a treat; not enlarged quite as much as I would have liked but now I know, I can play around and learn from this.

Isn't this place wonderful.

Adobe's website have lots of help about Elements 7 and how to do different tasks with the tools provided. I have posted a link below as this will guide you through what you can do.

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Photosho...831D02A3E.html

They also have a forum where you can post questions and someone will answer quickly. A lot of us use the full Photoshop program and as Elements is a cut down version we are not always sure how it differs from the full program.

I should just add that we were all in your shoes once and had to learn how to use the software, so don't be afraid to ask any questions.

[Chris George]

A great tip for scrolling around the picture when zoomed down is to hold down the spacebar on the keypad - this automatically switches you to the Move tool for as long as you hold the spacebar down. The cursor turns into a Hand-shaped icon as you do this. You can then click and drag the image around to get to the bit you want to see or work on