Part I: Learning Photoshop Elements

Spend a few minutes looking around the program, pook around as much as you like.  When you are ready, open up your picture (the pencils or the landscape image off of Google).  Click on Image at the top.  You are going to be adjusting somethings, including "Levels" and "Hue and Saturation."  First find Levels in the menu and click on it.  A box with pop up with a weird graph and a bunch of sliders.  You adjust the (light) level by sliding those little slider things.  One represents pure white, one is for pure black, and one is for 50% in between.  by moving the three around you can change the light in the picture. 

Click Undo, we are going to try something else now. Now find "Hue and Saturation" another box comes up.  The first slider is for the Color (hue), the next is for the saturation (how intense the color is), the last is for the value (lightness), you can mess with this some too.  Try to make the Yellow pencils red, or blue. 

Undo that as well, look around near the same place and find some other things to do with the image.  Always undo back to the start so you can tell the affect of the thing you are trying out.

Part II: Learning the Design Principles

All designs, (magazines, webpages, posters, movie posters, even deoderant sticks) are made up of a few simple design priciples.  They are texture, line, shape, color, value, and format.

You will use Photoshop Elements to make a picture that uses each of these principles once.  You can make one design, or you can make six.  I want to be able to see right away which principle is where.  Make interesting use of line.  Use shapes in an interesting way.  Use color variation to say something.  Change how light or dark things are (value) for your own special reason.  Format and emphasis you dont have to worry about as much.  You need to use the paintbrush, the text tool and differen selections to make your design(s).