Happy New Year!

I hope 2012 finds you happy and healthy. With each passing year, the time seems to fly by a little bit faster, but at the end of 2011 I felt like my family and I just finished a 100-meter sprint. At this time last January, I was desperately unpacking moving boxes in anticipation of my daughter, who was due to arrive any moment. Today, as I write this, she is busy chasing her older brother around the house like a devoted (and very drooly) puppy.

Photographically, the past year has been a tale of stops and starts. At the beginning of 2011, I challenged myself to spend the year really focusing on my shooting skills. In particular, I resolved to spend more time and care setting up my shots, paying close attention to composition and lighting. As I look back over my library from the year, I can see the effort paying off—slowly. Although I didn’t take nearly as many photos as I would have liked (there are entire months here and there when my camera stayed in its bag waiting for me to catch my breath), I’m happy with the general quality of the images I got. And I’ve enjoyed the mental practice of actively seeking out shots rather than merely waiting for them to appear before me. It’s a journey I hope to continue this year, and I’ve promised myself I will set aside time each week to devote to better honing my photographic eye.

Whatever your goals are for 2012, I hope you give yourself the gift of time. It’s easy to get caught up in all the demands of family and daily life and forget to save a few hours here and there for ourselves, time when the only one you need to answer to is your own creative vision.

Best wishes for a wonderful and creative New Year!

Kelly Turner
Editor in chief

January Photo Challenge: Black & White

Thanks to everyone who helped us kick off the PET Photo Challenge last year! We’ve been thrilled to have so many subscribers participate—and to see many of you posting to the galleries for the first time. You can see all of the winners from the 2011 photo challenges by clicking on this link. It’s a great group that really speaks to the variety of perspectives and the creative spirit of the challenge participants. We have a fun lineup of challenges planned for 2012, and we hope you’ll make a resolution to join in if you haven’t already.

For our January Photo Challenge, we’re testing your editing chops as well as your skills behind the camera. Your assignment is to send us your very best black-and-white image. The subject of the photo is entirely up to you—as is the method you use to convert your image to black and white.

When looking for your shot, keep an eye out for strong patterns, lines, and most importantly, contrast. The interplay between light and shadow is the key to a great black-and-white photo. Once you’re in Elements, you have several options for stripping color from your photo, including the Convert To Black And White command (under the Enhance menu), desaturating the image (via a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer), or a gradient map (Layers>New Adjustment Layer>Gradient Map). It may take some experimenting to find the right approach for your image, but that’s part of the fun.

If you’re interested in learning more about getting black-and-white photos—including some great editing tips—here are some good places to start:

• To kick the year off with a bang, our first video is Matt Kloskowski’s Get Better Black & White Images. Matt’s technique is an easy and quick alternative to Elements’ stock conversion—which he’s not a big fan of, and he shows us why.
• In his article Strategies for Better Black & White Photos (March/April 2009), Ben Long explains how to convert images in Elements using a couple of different methods. He also shows how to fine-tune the results by adjusting the tones in different parts of the image independently in his companion piece, Advanced Black and White Editing.
• Liz Ness demonstrates an alternate method for controlling the tones in your black-and-white image in this handy video tutorial, Hue Adjustment for Black & White? You Bet!. Liz’s method combines Gradient Map and Hue/Saturation adjustment layers—with wonderful results.
• The Digital Photography School website offers some helpful tips for shooting black-and-white photos, including an explanation of why you shouldn’t use your camera’s grayscale mode when shooting black-and-white JPEGs.
• If you’re in need of a little inspiration, check out this Flickr pool or Smashing Magazine’s “Beautiful Black and White Photography” collection.

To participate in the January Photo Challenge, simply upload your image to either the PET Subscriber Gallery or the Elements Village Gallery between January 1st and February 1st. Please be sure to place the phrase “Photo-Challenge” exactly as shown (without the quotes) in the Keywords field, if uploading to the Elements Village Gallery, or in the Description field, if uploading to the PET Gallery. Remember that photos should be taken within the challenge month. Best of luck!

January/February 2012 Issue and Extras Now Online

Our latest issue is in the mail and should be arriving to US customers any day—if it hasn’t landed in your mailbox already.

As you go through the issue, don’t forget to check out the January/February 2012 online extras. You’ll find sample files for several of the step-by-step tutorials so you can follow along, a great collection of tips for using Wordle to create word clouds (as well as a list of alternate programs that can confine your word cloud to specific shapes), and easy access to every link mentioned in the magazine. Enjoy!

As we noted on the blog, if you haven’t yet received your issue (and were a subscriber prior to Dec. 1), you should receive it by Jan. 8 (US), Jan. 15 (Canada), and Jan. 22 (UK, Australia and other locations). If you subscribed after December 1, we’ll be sending out the second mailing of the January/February issue at the end of this month.

As always, you can also find a downloadable PDF of the issue—along with all of our back issues—on the Magazine page on the PET site.

Recent Videos on the PET Website

If you’ve been off enjoying the holiday season with family and friends, you may have missed some of our most recent video tutorials. Here’s a look at what we’ve been up to while you were gone:

• When repairing old photos or removing unwanted objects, using the right tool is the key to success. If you’re confused about the difference between the Clone Stamp tool and the Healing Brush tool, Matt’s video, Cloning vs Healing Smackdown, will help. Matt shows you how each works and when to put them to work when repairing an image.
• Speaking of restoration tasks, Dave Cross shows a great technique for non-destructively restoring contrast and removing noise in old faded photos using Camera Raw.
• You can make sure those pearly whites gleam with Matt’s video tutorial on retouching the shape and color of teeth in Elements. This is a great technique for closing up a distracting gap or blunting sharp edges.
• Removing wires and power lines can be a tedious process. In this video, Dave Cross offers an alternate method that can save time by creating a simple selection.

Here’s to a wonderful 2012!

We hope the coming year is joyous one for all of you. Here at the magazine, we are looking forward to exploring some exciting—and often requested—topics, including how to make better selections and strategies for organizing your image library. If there are topics or projects you are particularly interested in seeing covered, feel free to drop Kelly a note or send a question to our Ask Liz email addresses. We aren’t always able to address every topic, but we do try to get to as many as we can, especially when we get similar requests from many readers.

Remember that you can follow our site updates via the Photoshop Elements Techniques Facebook page, or by following PSE_Techniques on Twitter. (You can also follow the blog via our RSS feed.)

This is the first email newsletter for 2012; you can find all previous editions on the “From the Editor” home page, which can be found under the Magazine link in the PET website header.