Ten ways to open a photo for editing

You can choose one or more ways to get an image from the organizer into any of the three editing modes to start creating magic.

• Right-click any thumbnail in Organizer and choose Edit with Photoshop Elements Editor (highlighted in red in the following screenshot).
• Select a thumbnail in Organizer, then select the Photo Editor tab from the Editor button popup at the base of the page.
• Click/select a thumbnail in Organizer, then drag it directly into the edit window (in Quick and Expert modes).
• Click the Open tab (at the top left-hand side in Expert edit mode) and navigate to the image files. Double-click the file name/icon.
• Choose File | Open recently edited file in the Quick, Guided, and Expert edit modes.
• Drag an image (icon) from a Windows/Mac Finder window into the Quick or Expert edit window.
• Use the File | Open menu command.
• Use the Ctrl/Cmd + O keyboard shortcut.
• Click/select a thumbnail in Organizer, then press Ctrl/Cmd + I (opens in the Expert mode).
• Using Alt/Opt + Ctrl/Cmd + O (in the Quick and Expert modes), navigate to the appropriate RAW, JPEG, or TIFF file and click Open to bring it into the Camera RAW window.

Right-clicking any thumbnail in Organizer pops out a contextual menu, as shown in the following screenshot—choose Edit with Photoshop Elements Editor to take that thumbnail into the edit workspace. Watch that you don't accidentally hit the one beneath this—that's for the video editor:

There are many different types of picture file formats. The most adaptable is the RAW file. Let's go ahead and look at how we can extract the best from these RAW files.