A simple and fun technique for Photoshop Elements

While playing with my photos today I taught myself how to remove a large empty space from a photo. My picture had items in the foreground then a large area that was empty before there was more in the distance. Closing up the empty space makes a great difference. Here is how it is done.
My picture started out looking like this

From the menu bar, click on Image>Recompose.
Nothing appears to have happened - but at the bottom of the screen there are two new controls

By default, when you touch the picture you will find you have a brush that allows you to paint over the parts of the photo that you do not want to damage. If there are people in the picture, be sure to touch each and every one or they could end up distorted! This is how I touched the parts I wanted to keep safe.

Now you need to click on the lower brush - the one with the minus sign beside it - to show which part or parts of the image you do not mind losing.

Once again I used a freehand line to mark the width of sand I wanted to remove.
I then clicked outside of the picture and this gave me the crop bounding box - you can see the nodes on the image above,
I then left mouse clicked on the centre bottom node and pushed the node upwards.

At the bottom of the image appeared the usual two symbols that you chose to accept the change or cancel. I selected the "check" symbol. When the bottom of the picture was pushed upwards the areas that were covered with green did not alter their shape at all. I did notice that the blank area of sky at the top was compressed even though I had not indicated one way or the other what I wanted to happen there.
The picture now has a transparent space that needs to be removed. So the next action is to use the regular crop tool.

When the crop boundary is exactly where you want it, left mouse click  the "Check" mark.
If you glance across at the Layers Palette you will notice that the image is now a layer. This means that it needs to be "Flattened" before it can be saved as a "jpg".

To flatten an image either go to the Menu bar and click on Layer>Flatten Image or in the Layers palette right click on the layer and left click on Flatten Image .
This technique can be used vertically as well as horizontally and the results are quite amazing! You have to try it!
AJ

Having another go with Photoscape

I have spoken to a few people who have downloaded Photoscape and are having a play with it and they are quite excited about what can be done. None of these people are clever "photoshop" users, they find the layers and masks and processes all very confusing and yet they are having a great time with this program and are getting very good results. It is good that a program such as this is not only easy to use but effective at all kinds of tasks too.
One of the people I have chatted to is scanning old slides and the results of the Photoscape manipulation I have been shown are excellent.

This photograph is a comparison shot. The photo on the left is how the original scan looks (I worked on this photo - it is of me a VERY long time ago!) The program allowed brightness and contrast correction, colour removal and cloning. The cloning tool is faultless! I was totally amazed at how easy and how invisibly the repairs were made. When scanning old photos there are always little black and sometimes, white, dots that mar the picture. I was able to zoom right in and use the clone brush to remove those blemishes.
If I wanted to give the corrected photo a sepia wash so that it looks as dated as the original a quick click on the appropriate filter will do that. But since the photo was a black and white originally and only time and poor developing has changed it to dull brown I will keep it the way I have now made it!
AJ