Creative workflow

Once you have gained confidence in being able to control the color, brightness, clarity, and sharpness of your image output, it's time to consider something a little more creative.

Once the tones in the file are looking the way you want them to, it's also time to consider the onerous task of cleaning up the subject using one of Photoshop Element's amazing retouching tools. This might be a simple operation of perfecting skin tones by covering up tiny blemishes, scratches, or color inconsistencies using the Spot Healing Brush, or it might be something a little more ambitious where objects in the foreground or background need removing or at least covering up to prevent them from dominating the subject.

Before you get too involved in this kind of advanced retouching, it's important to ask yourself if, by removing a certain object, the composition will change noticeably. If this is the case, you may want to camouflage that object by simply dulling it down...