Did you know there are six ways to open photos in Photoshop Elements? Let's run through them and then you can choose which one or two methods you prefer to use.

First I'll click on the Photo Bin icon in the Taskbar to open the Photo Bin, which is where we'll see thumbnails of the photos we open. Method one for opening photos is a well known command in most programs. In the Menu Bar, choose File, Open. This opens a computer navigational window for you to locate the photos you want to open. I'll navigate to my pictures folder where I created a folder specifically for all my QwikLearn Photoshop Elements downloads and files. If I open that folder, I'll see the folder for the first class module that I downloaded from the QwikLearn classroom. The download folder is called ql-PSE-01-Hello-PSE. That stands for QwikLearn Photoshop Elements, Part One, which is titled Hello Photoshop Elements.

Inside that folder is a folder called Practice Files. The image tells me there are no practice files for lessons one through six and lesson nine. The numbers on the folders correspond to the class lesson number. And they also have a short title to let you know the topic of that lesson. Lesson seven contains the different kinds of files I talked about in the previous lesson on file formats. I included those files in your downloads in case you want to look at them.

Currently, we're on lesson seven. These are the photos I'm about to open. If you want to open your own photos, you can do that instead, click on the file you want to open and click Open and your selected photo will open in Photoshop Elements. It's in a floating window because, remember, when I set my preferences I checked Allow Floating Documents in Expert Mode. Notice that the Photo Bar also contains a thumbnail of my photo, and so does the Layers panel.

Method two is to use a keyboard shortcut for opening photos. Open the File menu again and you'll see the shortcut for opening files listed to the right of the Open command: Ctrl O in Windows, Command O on a Mac. The word Open starts with the letter O, O for open. And you'll use it in conjunction with the Ctrl key in Windows or the Command key on a Mac.

Let's try it. I'll close the file menu and press Ctrl O in Windows, Command O on a Mac. And I get the navigational window again. Click on the file you want and click Open.

Method three for opening photos is to click on the word Open in the upper left corner of the desktop. There's also a menu that gives you several other choices. Your recently open photos are listed here. So you can click on one of them and that file will open right up. You can choose new image from clipboard but this option will be grayed out if you don't have anything copied to the clipboard which I don't. You can also click on new blank file to create a new document. But most of the time, you'll just click directly on the word Open. Again, this opens the navigational computer window. Instead of clicking on a file to select it and then clicking the Open button, you can simply double click on the file to open it.

Method four to open photos is to use the Organizer, a program that comes bundled with Photoshop Elements, you can access the Organizer by clicking on the Organizer icon in the Taskbar at the bottom of Photoshop Elements. However, you must first import your photos to the Organizer before you can open them. I explained the basics of the Organizer elsewhere, but here I just want to show you how to open a photo. The Organizer recognizes when a photo is open and marks it as Edit In Progress. You can't edit a photo in the Editor and in the Organizer at the same time, so that's why it gives me this notice.

To open an additional photo, click on a thumbnail to select it and click on the Editor icon in the Taskbar to open your photos in the Editor portion of Photoshop Elements. For opening files in other programs like Photoshop, click on the triangle to access those options. But here I'll just click on the Editor button. And there is my photo in Photoshop Elements.

Method five is to open a photo directly from an Explorer window in Windows or from a Finder window on a Mac by double clicking on the photo. If you double click on a file in a computer window and it opens in a program other than Photoshop Elements, you might want to set Photoshop Elements as the default program to open certain kinds of files such as JPEGs, PNGs and PSDs, the formats we talked about in a previous lesson. If you don't know how to do that, open a browser window and type in a search such as "set default program Windows" or "set default program Mac." Once you've set Photoshop Elements as a default program, you can double click on a file on your computer and it will open in Photoshop Elements.

Method six is to click and drag files from a computer window directly onto the Photoshop Elements desktop. This is one of my favorite ways to open photos. Open a computer window, navigate to the photo you want to open and click and drag it onto the Photoshop Elements desktop.

So there you have six ways to open photos in Photoshop Elements. I use three of these methods on a regular basis, mostly the keyboard shortcut Ctrl or Command O, but also double clicking on a file in a computer window and dragging files from a computer window to Photoshop Elements. With practice, you'll soon settle into your favorite method or two or three, which may be different than mine. It's also important to be able to close photos and files quickly. So in our next lesson, we'll talk about four ways to close photos including how to close all the documents on your desktop with one command.