Photoshop Elements to the Rescue

I’ve been working on a book on blogging in libraries for the last year with Jason Griffey and we are nearly done. However, in order to prepared the mauscript for the publisher we need to send them all our screenshots at 300 dpi. On a Mac this is a pain because Grab the native Mac screenshot tool only screenshots at 72 dpi. I can use Photoshop Elements to change the dpi and resample the screenshots so they look good for print but I have many screenshots. The solution used Photoshop Elements 4.0 built-in “Process Multiple Files” feature. With this I can select a folder of screenshots to resize and resample and then direct new copies to be saved to a 300_dpi version folder. While I have to convert each of the folders of images (I have my images organized by chapter), this is much faster than performing the manipulations by hand. All in all it took me less than 30 minutes to adjust all my screenshots.

The Process Multiple Files tool not only handles resizing options, it also will allow you to batch convert files from one format to another, auto correct levels, contrast, and color, or add a watermark. I also discovered that this version of Photoshop Elements will help you make Web Photo Galleries, Contact Sheets, or a PDF slidshow. These features are a huge step up from my previous version (2.0) of Elements.

I see now why my friend Amanda who has a part-time wedding photography business with her husband love Photoshop so much. Up until this point I’ve always felt any version of Photoshop (Elements or the full version) was overkill for my needs. But with writing the book and creating many more digital photo prints and other products I’m really glad I purchased Elements. It has been a lifesaver!

Another tool which has save me tremendous amounts of time is 1001, which is a Flickr uploading tool. Normally, I upload to Flickr from iPhoto using Flickr Exporter (a great tool in itself) but I don’t want my screenshots intermixed with my personal photos. So I needed a tool that would allow me to batch upload photos, assign permissions, tag them and most importantly of all put them in a group. 1001 makes this a snap.

The last year of book writing has been a learning experience for me. Not only in research and writing of a book, but also in how to work collaboratively over a distance.  All the tools I’ve found and the skills I’ve developed are will help me in the next year as I work on several more collaborative projects.