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Lesson 2 - Introduction to Photoshop ElementsScroll down for tutorial on how to launch Photoshop Elements with basic parameters. Lesson 2.1 - Beginning TutorialsFor the following tutorials, Go directly to Jay Arriach's tutorial page for Beginners:
Project 2.1:
Layer Styles - general Project 2.4: Color Print Portrait Project 2.5: Color Print Favorite Photo from Q1 Project 2.6: Create Gallery of favorite prints Project 2.7: Create Web of all 12 Elements of Photography from Q1 How to launch Photoshop ElementsNew Picture Options -
Elements BasicsFollowing borrowed from: This is a broad overview of the Photoshop Elements window and its main features, with a few helpful tips. Shown below is the opening screen in a typical configuration. 
Numbers have been added to identify the main features. They are:
The menubar (1) is where you find Element's commands. The
View and Help menus will be discussed on the next pages. The other
menus will be learned as you use Elements. The meaning of the various
commands can best be understood in context. The Shortcuts bar (2) is basically the same as that which you find in most Windows programs. It contains buttons for New, Open, Copy, Save, Print, etc. The Undo, Redo, and Show/Hide Rulers buttons are particularly handy. 
The options bar (3) shows the options of whichever tool is currently selected in the toolbox. When you select a tool in the toolbar, it's very important to remember that you need to set the proper options before using the tool. The toolbar (4) contains all the Elements tools. Some are not visible, but are hidden under another tool. For example, the magnetic lasso is hidden under the (regular) lasso tool. To choose the magnetic lasso, click on the lasso tool and pick the magnetic lasso from the pop-up menu that appears.  The Elements tools, found in the toolbar, fall roughly into the following categories: Selection tools - used for creating closed boundaries. Once
a selection has been made, editing can only occur within the selection
outline. To remove a selection, or make it inactive, choose Select
> Deselect from the menubar, or press Ctrl-D. Painting tools - used for adding color by using the mouse like a brush, or by simply filling areas with a selected color. These include the paintbrush, Impressionist brush, airbrush, gradients, paint bucket, and pencil tool. Retouching tool - used for editing existing colors and image details. These include the clone stamp, red eye brush, erasers, dodge, burn, sponge, blur, sharpen, and smudge tools. Vector tools - used for creating, and editing vector shapes. These include the shape selection tool, shape tools, and line tool. Change view tools - used for moving and magnifying the view of an image, without affecting the image, itself. The hand, and zoom tools are workhorses you'll be using constantly. And, then there's the type tool, with warp text abilities, the crop tool for chopping images down to size, the move tool for moving selection contents or layers, the eyedropper for collecting color, size, and location data, and the big foreground/background color squares you see near the bottom of the toolbox that are where you can make your color choices. Click here to view all the tools in the tool bar. When you are learning to use Elements, it can be very helpful to keep an accurate record of all the steps you use when editing an image, or trying to create an effect. You should record all tools, filters, and effects as well as their settings, and dialog box entries. The status bar (5) shows the image's current magnification in the extreme left corner. You can change the magnification by typing in a value and pressing Enter. By clicking the little black arrow about a third of the way along the status bar, you can find a menu from which you can pick which image data you would like displayed in the status bar. 
Towards the center of the status bar, you will see tips related to whatever tool you are currently using. 
Note that the title bar of your image contains color mode, and magnification information, and indicates what layer is currently selected, i.e.: 
The palettes (7) either open, or stored in the palette well (6), are where Layers are managed, and Swatches, Layer Styles, Effects, Recipes, and Files can be chosen.
Clicking on the title tab of a palette in the well will open it temporarily. It will close again as soon as you change focus. To bring a palette out of the palette well in order to have it open at all times, drag it by its title tab. If you click on New View in the View menu, a copy of your image will open in another window. You can have the two windows at different magnifications, which can be very useful if you've zoomed way in to edit details, but would like to see what things look like at 100 %. 
An example of three views of the same image, all open at the same time, is shown below. The view on the left was at 33.33 % magnification, the center view was at 150 %, and the view on the right was at 300 % 
The Zoom In, Zoom Out, Fit on Screen, Actual Pixels, and Print Size commands all affect magnification and should be self-explanatory. When you make a selection in Elements, the selection outline shows up as an animated dotted line usually referred to as the "marching ants." If you can't see what you're doing because of them, choose Selection Edges from the view menu to toggle it off. When checked, the selection outlines are shown; when unchecked, the marching ants will not be shown. Do be sure and turn these on most of the time, otherwise you will have no way of telling when something is selected without the visual reminder of the marching ants. If you choose Show Rulers you will see rulers across the top and left sides of your image. To change the ruler origin, drag on the little square in the top left corner. If you choose Show Grid, you will see a mesh of regular rules superimposed on your image. These are useful when trying to position items precisely. You can change the color of the lines, and the increments by choosing Edit > Preferences > Grid. I chose a green color in the illustration below, in hopes it would show up better on this page. 
When the rulers or grid are showing, the View menu item will change to Hide Rulers, and Hide Grid. Click either to hide the option. You can use the ruler icon on the Shortcut bar to toggle rulers off and on. The Snap command, in the View menu is the one I find most annoying. When turned on, as it is by default, selection outlines, including crop outlines will snap to the grid, and to edges, including the image edge. This makes it almost impossible to shave off small amounts when cropping. I keep this turned off (unchecked) almost all the time. When used in conjunction with the grid, Snap can be useful for fast, precise positioning. The last topic you should know about is your Preferences file. If Elements ever starts acting funny, or misbehaving in any way, the first thing you want to try is deleting your Preferences file. The quick and easy way to do this is to press the Shift, Ctrl, and Alt keys all at once as you are launching Elements. You will then be requested to confirm your request. 
Click "Yes" and Elements will then continue to load. A new Preferences file is generated automatically. A corrupted Preferences file is very often the source of your problems, and deleting it should be the very first thing you try if you are having new, unexplained problems with Elements performance. Preferences are set by choosing Edit > Preferences. Here you can change many of Elements features to better suit your working style. When you delete the Preferences file, as described above, of course, all your preferences are set back to their default values. If your preferences are very different from the default settings, it may be a good idea for you to keep an uncorrupted copy of your preferences somewhere outside the Adobe folder. That way, after deleting preferences, you can simply copy the saved file into the Settings folder. Be aware that preferences are not saved until you close Elements. Therefore, if you have just deleted and then recreated your preferences, close Elements before copying the clean file to a safe location. Where can you find your preferences file? Depends on your OS. The list at the end of this page comes from the Read Me file that came with Elements.If you are unsure about exactly which file is the Preferences file, right click on the one you think might be it, and choose Properties from the menu. The file Properties box should look like this (top only shown) 
Windows Preferences locations: Windows 98 or Windows ME: Windows NT: Windows 2000:
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