Thanks to digital, I have total control over my images—and so do you. If I couldn’t see the effect of exposure settings on the LCD and make adjustments on the spot, I’d have a lower percentage of keepers. What’s more, I couldn’t make enhancements—creative decisions would be left to a photo lab, as it was when I first got into photography. And don’t forget the power of a RAW file, from which you can recover up to one stop of an overexposed area! Here, I’ll share a few enhancements made using Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Readers of PCPhoto know that for my professional work, I depend on Photoshop CS2 for my image enhancements. For pros like me, it’s the coolest program around. However, Photoshop Elements, CS2’s little brother so to speak, offers many professional image-enhancement features, too. In fact, most of the image enhancements and creative stuff you want to do can be accomplished in Elements.

Recently, my good friend Karen Ippolito e-mailed me a fun self-portrait. Karen is a good photographer and a talented artist who has taken many creative photographs with her Canon EOS 5D. However, for this self-portrait, she used a tiny point-and-shoot digital camera.

In my workshops, I used to tell students that the background was almost as important as the main subject. Today, I tell them that it’s just as important as the main subject and that it can make or break a photograph. When we’re traveling, we don’t always have control over our subject’s surroundings, so we may have to take photos with backgrounds that distract from the subject.