Jon Sienkiewicz

Forget Photoshop for a few—let’s talk about three physical filters that you’ll fully enjoy while the fall foliage flourishes as well as later when the yearend holiday festivities finally flow in. In fact, you’ll find them fun to use anytime, frankly. 

The White Balance feature on your digital camera does more than advertised. Read this Easy Tip to learn how to add subtle adjustments to sunset and sunrise shots.

Many, many years ago a coworker at Altman Camera in Chicago showed me that it was possible to screw a Vivitar +10 Macro Adapter into a partially disassembled set of Nikon K-series extension rings and thereby build a soft focus lens that practically exploded with delightfully horrendous aberrations. It was fixed-focus, you had to bob to-and-fro like a drunken sailor to use it, but it was sensationally unsharp and I’ve been hooked on this genre ever since.

Many features of Photoshop Elements can be customized to suit your liking. Surprisingly, some experienced users overlook this powerful capability. A great place to start is at the Preferences menu. This screen shot is from the Mac version, but the same concept applies to Win as well as full-blown Photoshop products.