Absolute Beginner's Guide to Digital Photography

■ Layer sets. Partial compatibility in PSD and TIFF formats. A layer set cre-

ated in Photoshop is locked in Elements. You can turn it off, but you cannot

modify it.

■ Text and text layers. Interchangeable. Text is fully editable between

Elements and Photoshop for TIFF and PSD images. Text can be created and

manipulated in either program. In addition, if text falls within a layer set,

you will not be able to access the text layer, but you can edit the text!

Advanced text options are not available in Elements of course, but every

other text-related feature is available.

■ Channels and saved selections.Elements does not have a Channels

palette, but selections saved in Photoshop in TIFF and PSD are accessible by

clicking Select, Load Selection in Elements (see Figure 7.1). You can create a

selection in Elements, save the image as a TIFF or PSD, and open it in

Photoshop, as well.

■ Paths. No compatibility. Elements has no Paths palette. An image created

with paths in Photoshop and saved as a TIFF or PSD file will open in

Elements, but there is no way to access paths. A workaround is to create a

selection from the path, save it as a selection in Photoshop, and then send

the file to Elements.

CHAPTER 7 FILES AND FILE FORMATS 85

FIGURE 7.1
A channel cre-
ated in
Photoshop (left)
and accessible
in Elements
(right).

©2004 Nicholas E. Papadakis

The majority of Photoshop features are compatible with Photoshop Elements as long

as you use the PSD format (.psd). JPEG and TIFF features aren’t as big an issue

between the two programs. The following sections explain the science behind each

popular format--JPEG, TIFF, and Photoshop--and explore when one format should be

used rather than another.