Hubris! What a difference a couple months make in the life of one's knowledge of Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. In my December 8, 2010 post I said one of the short comings of PSE was the fact that Channels were not available. Duh! How can you have an RGB (Red, Green, Blue) image without having, at least, those three Channels. Another thing that's available in Elements is Save Selection (Select/Save Selection). Okay, if you can save a Selection, where do it go? A saved selection is another name for an Alpha Channel. Therefore, if we have color Channels and we have Alpha Channels, we have Channels. If you go to Load Selection (Select/Load Selection) you'll see a dropdown that allows you to pick the "selection" (Alpha Channel) you'd like to load. If there's a dropdown list with multiple choices, it's because you can save multiple Alpha Channels. It's possible that there is a limit to the number of Alpha Channels you can have in PSE, but I haven't come across it. To find out why this lapse in knowledge bugs me, hit the "read more".I use PS CS5 for all my paid and personal work, so why do I care if Elements has Channels? I use CS5, I teach PSE. I really hate to dismiss things as being inferior and wind up with egg on my face at a later time. I can honestly say, every time I teach a Photoshop Elements class I learn something.
There was a young lady in the last set of PSE classes I taught. I asked what she hoped to take away from the class. Her answer was that she wanted to know everything about PSE. I laughed (just a little) and asked that she come back and teach me the 70% I don't know about PSE after she had learned "everything".
I know enough to teach PSE. I know enough to impress folks with my knowledge of CS5 and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3, but I certainly don't know "everything" about any of Adobe's applications.
I've taken Examaids practice tests for the Adobe ACE (Adobe Certified Expert) exams for both CS5 and LR3. On the CS5 practice exam I can score about 35-40%. On the LR3 test I'm sort of borderline pass or fail. Once I'm consistently in the green (passing) range I'll go try the official paid test and see if I can be a "Lightroom A.C.E. The difference in the two is the fact that LR3 is for photographers and CS5 is for everyone. Photographers, graphic designers, web designers, technical illustrators, etc. Areas that I have no knowledge of and no ongoing need to learn. With no daily interaction with those parts of CS5 I just can't get a handle on the questions aimed to those areas.
So, hopefully, I'll continue to learn "something" new on a frequent basis. If I get to the point where I think I know everything, feel free to smack me up alongside my head, because arrogance has gotten the best of me. Until then, teach me something new every time we meet. I love learning.