I have taken a screenshot of a magazine article. I would like to highlight some text in the image. Note that the only thing I know how to do in PE is to add text to an image. There aren’t any classes or anything to learn how to use it. Online instructions start with: 'Create the Adjustment Layer: Open your image in Photoshop, go to the bottom of the Layers panel, click the Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer icon, and choose Brightness/Contrast (or Exposure, depending on your preference). I don’t know what any of that means. If I click Layer on the toolbar, all options are greyed out. Normally, when I try to find instructions for things online, they’re for a different version of whatever I’m trying to use, I can’t find what they’re talking about, or whatever.
So this is a long-shot. Can anyone explain how I can do this? (I do have another option: Email it to my work address, and then cut it with Snipping Tool, and do the highlights there.)
To start with, if it’s a screenshot, it is not text. What you’re seeing as text is only a portion of the image. You can possibly select the text area if there’s enough contrast to distinguish it from the surrounding areas.
Or place a rectangle over the text area on a new layer, fill it with colour (yellow highlight?), set the layers to multiply & adjust opacity to suit.
oops. I saw the image in the second post, and connected it with the first. Then I scrolled up to confirm my memory and did the same thing. Brain fart on my part.
If you have to do it in an image editor, this is how I’d do it too. (Or you can use the brush tool and select a highlighter-looking stroke).
I don’t have Photoshop Elements handy, but here’s how you’d do it in the free photopea.com (which is basically Photoshop but online… no account or purchase needed or anything):
Open image
Choose the brush tool
Choose a brushstroke — I chose a vertical one that looks like a highlighter stroke
Set a size, probably around 15-20px but adjust as needed
I have no idea how to use Photoshop Elements. When I need to do what you’re trying to do, I use Greenshot (freeware open source PC screenshot program), take a screenshot, and use the highlighting tool to draw the highlighting. Simple.
Been a good longs time since I came into contact with Photoshop Elements, but I recall that you couldn’t create new layers in a document whose format doesn’t support saving layers. So JPG, bitmaps, GIF, like that. If that’s the case, gotta save the doc, as a PSD then start the process of adding the adjustment layer.
Ah. That makes sense of the somewhat cryptic stuff I found when just checking Google to help the OP.
What an odd way to do things. Every other app I know with layers lets you use them within the app, then flattens upon saving to layer-free formats. This just seems to add an unnecessary step to be able to use the features of the program.
That’s what I run into all the time when I want to do something in an unfamiliar program. The illustrations don’t match what I see. Here’s what I see:
Yes.
Exactly. The only thing I know how to do in Photoshop Elements is put text on pictures. I can’t even take two pictures and put them side-by-side to make one picture. Nowadays, kids are born with the innate ability to do anything on a computer. By the time I need to or want to do something, nobody’s teaching it anymore. (And yes, I’ve checked the community college catalogues.)
Yes, it’s a picture of an article.
PSD does not appear to be an option in Preview (my viewer).
If it were easy and intuitive, I would probably have picked up some things by now. As it is, the last pre-Photoshop-like editor I used was Ulead PhotoImpact. That was almost 30 years ago on a PC.
I can’t tell if that’s a joke or you found someone else’s AI screenshot or something, lol. Or apparently it’s a portrait correction tool for people’s photos…
What you need is a pencil or PAINTbrush tool, lol. I think you might need to switch to “Expert” mode at the top?
Or just use Photopea.com and follow my video above for the exact way to do it.
Probably because you’re in “Quick Mode”. My illustration is showing the “Advanced Mode”* with the full selection of tools down the left side. (*the same as “Expert Mode” in your image, they changed the name a few versions ago)
My image was a screen shot that I saved as a jpeg.
PS since you’re on a Mac, you can also open the image in Preview (just double-click on it). Then you can highlight the text — even though it’s a picture (because Apple automatically recognizes the text inside pictures). Then take a screenshot of your highlighted picture and share that instead.
Well, like I said, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen Photoshop Elements. And that’s how Photoshop used to behave a good while back, it’s long since been updated to work the way you’re expecting. Photoshop Elements is just old and may still behave in crusty fashion.
