Expanding functionallity PS Elements

Hi all,
I thought I would share a little tip, to all PS Elements users around here.
As you all know Elements is the little brother of Photo shop and can do a lot of things Photo shop does, but is missing some key futures that are only available to Photo shop.
Which functions ?? Well......for me the next ones are very important.
1# Channel Mixer ( the full version, not the simplified one excisting in Elements 6 and higher)
2# Curves
3# Adding layer masks
4# Transforming selections.

There are of course a lot of other futures in PS like the ability to work in 16 bit Tiff or soft proofing but personally I can do without them.
The first 4, mentioned above I really need.
Now...I can of course splash out a lot of cash and buy the real thing, but for me the overkill of futures in PS compared to Elements and the price doesn't justify the costs. I already have Elements 6 which does a great job, for most of my needs. I just wish, I could work with the 4 extra futures mentioned earlier.

And that is, where Grant's Tools for Elements comes in. It is free and it works!!

This is how it works. First download the file from the link above.
Just save as and unzip the package. It works for Win. and Mac users.
Make sure Elements is closed when you start installing.

1# Navigate to:
My Coputer/C:/Documents and Settings/All users/Application data/Adobe/Elements/6.0/Photo creations/Photo effects.

2# Next open the folder grant's tools for elements and click on the sub map actions and pngs. It should look like this:




Copy and paste the content in the Photo Effect folder mentioned in 1#

3# Navigate to:My Computer/C:/All users/ Application data/Adobe/Photoshop Elements/6.0/Locale/en-US/Photo Creations Meta data/Photo Effects

4# Next open the folder grant's tools for elements and click on the sub map XML files. It should look like this:




Copy and paste the content in the Photo Effect folder mentioned in 3#


5# Navigate to: My Computer/C:/All users/ Application data/Adobe/Photoshop Elements/6.0/Locale/en-US

Then: Rename the Mediadatabase.db3 file to MediadatabaseOLD.db3
and restart Elements ... the Mediadatabase.db3 will rebuild but you may have to wait a while for it to do so.

That's all, that has to be done.
When Elements is ready and you open a picture you will find the extra futures by clicking on the effects tab, above layers.
When you click on all effects you will see a huge amount of effects visible. Most of them, you won't use. I know I don't.
To have direct and quick access I decided to delete all the effects, except the four new ones, by dragging each link to the bin, beneath the tab.
All these unnecessary effects are still found when clicking on the option: filters found on the task bar. You just delete the links.


Finally I'll show you some screen shots of the New Futures at work.

Channel mixer:



Curves:



Layer masks:



Transform selections:



Just notice how clean and organised it looks, when you get rid of all those effect, just leaving the most wanted available.

I hope..... that some of you Elements users, like me have found this useful and thereby can save some money.
It's far better to spend your hard earned cash on lenses, yes :

Martin.

very good Martin,useful tools for PSE users.

Thanks for that link.
There's also the very useful set here: http://www.hiddenelements.com/

Many of the tools are free as well
Matt