This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
General Fixes
The General fixes include Smart Fix, which sounds promising, and Red Eye Fix, which is downright indispensable. You already know what red eye is and why you don't want it, but what exactly does Smart Fix do?
Smart Fix adjusts both lighting and color at the same time, leaving your image ready for sharpening. Ideally, while maintaining or improving contrast, Smart Fix lightens shadows that are too dark and darkens highlights that are too bright. You can apply it either by clicking Auto or by dragging the slider to determine exactly how much you're willing to let Photoshop Elements mess around with your picture.
Clicking the Auto button usually yields the same amount of modification as dragging the slider halfway. If you drag the slider all the way to the right, an undesirable color cast might appear. This is, quite literally, too much of a good thing; the maximum setting for the Smart Fix slider makes the same changes Photoshop Elements would do automatically, only to a greater degree. For example, if an image is too orange, adding a bit of green to it balances the color. But adding more green just turns the whole picture greenish.
Now, before we move on, you should know one thing about Red Eye Fix: It doesn't always work. That's right, Photoshop Elements might be magical, but it's not infallible. Occasionally, the program finds an area in the image that it thinks is a red eye and "fixes" it, which is not so good if the area is actually supposed to be red. Other times, it inexplicably overlooks the huge case of red eye right in the middle of the picture. If Red Eye Fix doesn't work for you, undo and switch to Full Edit mode so you can make the fix manually using the Red Eye Removal tool. We go over how to do that in Hour 13, "Removing Red Eye, Dust, and Scratches."