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The
Photo Fix panel in the Organizer offers some one click automatic photo adjustments for
color and for lighting including contrast, color, levels, and smart fix. If you're looking
for an instant fix while you're managing photos in the Organizer, these can be handy. The
advantage of these options is that they're simple and quick to apply. But, the disadvantage
is that they're automatic, so you don't have much control over the outcome. Let's take
a look at those options. I'll start by zooming in on this image to single image view by double-clicking
the thumbnail. At this size, I can really see that this image is kind of flat and gray
looking. It looks to me like it needs more contrast. So I'm going to start by clicking
the Contrast icon over here in the Photo Fix Options. And that did make a slight change.
Clicking a Photo Fix icon like Contrast does several things. It makes a copy of the original
thumbnail and changes the appearance of the copy as we just saw, but it doesn't affect
the original. And then it puts the copy together with the original thumbnail in what's called
a version set, which is a stacked group of thumbnails. So, if I go back to Grid View
by double -clicking on this image again, I still see just the corrected image. But, if
I click this right-facing arrow, that will expand the version set; the grouping that
the Organizer made of the corrected photo on the left and the original photo on the
right. And now when I see them together, I really can see that contrast did make a difference
to the photo on the left. By the way, you can tell which is the corrected photo because
it's the one with the Brush icon at the top-right corner, and Elements automatically appends
the word "edited" to the filename of the corrected version. And notice that I didn't have to
save anything. When you use the Photo Fix Options, the Organizer automatically saves
that copy for you. You can apply more than one Photo Fix Option to the same photo. So,
after I've made a photo look the way I wanted, I'll often sharpen it. To really see sharpening,
I need to be zoomed in. So I'm going to double-click the corrected photo to zoom into single image
view again, and then I'll apply sharpening by just clicking the Sharpen icon here. And
that does sharpen the image a bit. If I want more sharpening, I can click the Sharpen icon
again, because Photo Fix Options are cumulative. Now, what if I want to undo some of those
steps? That's done from the Task pane at the bottom of the Organizer. Over on the left
side of the Task pane is the Undo button. If I hover over that, the Organizer tells
me what I'm going to undo. So I'm going to undo the last step Auto Sharpen when I click
once here, then I'll move off and then back on that icon, and now I'm going to undo that
first Auto Sharpen, off and then back on, and this time I'm undoing the Auto Contrast.
Since that was the first adjustment I applied, that just flipped me back to the Grid View,
and now I don't have the version set, I just have the original. Let's take a quick look
at some of the other Photo Fix Options that effect lighting or tone and color. One of
those is Levels. I'll double-click the thumbnail again to go to single image view and then
I'm going to click the Levels icon. What levels does is try to increase the contrast, but
it sometimes has an effect on color unlike the Contrast option. In this case, I think
it's added a little bit of a blue tint. It's hard to see unless we compare the original
so, I'm going to double-click to go back to Grid View and open the new version set, and
I'll zoom in a little so you can see that better. So, here's the original on the right,
and here's the version to which I applied Levels which is more contrasty but also has
a change in color. I'll undo that by clicking the Undo button, and now let's take a look
at what the Color option does. Again, I'll double-click, and then I'll click the Color
option. Color automatically tries to improve both the color, and the contrast. But, I really
don't like what it's done with the color here. Double-click again to go back, and open the
version set, and you can see that the corrected version is a lot duller. So again, I'll undo.
And finally, I'm going to try applying Smart Fix. So, I'll double-click to zoom in, and
I'll click the Smart Fix icon. The tool-tip tells us that Smart Fix tries to improve the
colors, the shadows, and the highlights. In other words, it's dark and the light areas
of the photo as well as the color. And sometimes, Smart Fix is all you need; let's apply it
and see how it does in this case. Again, I'll go back by double-clicking to Grid View, I'll
expand the version set, and in this case again, I've got a kind of blue or greenish cast in
the corrected version, the one to which I applied Smart Fix. So, I'm going to undo one
more time. I think the best fix in this case was contrast. So back, I go to the Contrast
icon, I'll click it, and when I expand the version set to compare to the original, I
really am happiest with this change, and that's all I have to do.