Recomposing in Photoshop Elements

The Recompose tool facilitates intelligent resizing of photos without changing important visual content such as people, building, animals, and more. Normal scaling affects all pixels uniformly when resizing an image. Recompose affects pixels in areas that don’t have important visual content. Recompose enables you to upscale or downscale images to improve a composition, fit a layout, or change the orientation.

If you want to preserve or remove specific areas when scaling an image, Recompose enables you to protect content intelligently during resizing.

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Recompose can also be performed without using the protect areas option. For example, to recompose a photo without marking any areas for protection or removal, drag the image handles.

Before Recompose (left) and after Recompose

A. Photo selected for Recompose B. Areas marked for protection (green) and for removal (red) C. Photo after Recompose

Open a photo in the photo bin that you want to resize, and select the Guided mode.

Select Guided > Special Edits > Recompose.

Mark the areas you want to protect using the Protect brush. Right-click the photo, and select one of the following modes:

Use Normal Highlight

This mode is similar to painting. Mark all the regions that require protection. For example, protecting a circle using Normal Highlight requires marking or painting the entire circle.

Use Quick Highlight

You can quickly highlight the required regions for protection. Encircle the subject to highlight the required regions. For example, to highlight the area within a circle, trace the boundary of the circle. Quick Highlight ensures that the area within the circle is marked for protection.

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You can specify the size of the brush and the photo.

Green indicates the areas marked for protection.

To erase portions of unwanted marked areas (green), right-click the photo, and select Clear Protect Highlights.

Mark the areas you want to remove (areas that are unimportant) using the Remove brush tool.

Red indicates the areas marked for removal.

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Right-click the photo, and select Clear All Highlights to erase protected and unprotected marked areas.

To erase portions of unwanted marked areas (red), right-click the photo, and select Clear Remove Highlights.

Drag the image handles or select a size from the Preset drop-down, to Recompose your photo.

Open a photo in the photo bin that you want to resize, and select Image > Recompose, or click the Recompose tool.

Mark the areas you want to protect using the Protect brush. Right-click the photo, and select one of the following modes:

Use Normal Highlight
Use Quick Highlight

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You can specify the size of the brush and the photo.

Green indicates the areas marked for protection.

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Recompose can also be performed without using the protect areas option. For example, to recompose a photo without marking any areas for protection or removal, drag the image handles .

Do one of the following to erase portions of unwanted marked areas (green):

Erase using the Eraser tool.

Right-click the photo, and select Clear Protect Highlights.

Mark the areas you want to remove (areas that are unimportant) using the Remove brush tool.

Red indicates the areas marked for removal.

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Right-click the photo, and select Clear All Highlights to erase protected and unprotected marked areas.

Do one of the following to erase portions of unwanted marked areas (red):

Erase using the Eraser tool.

Right-click the photo, and select Clear Remove Highlights.

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You can specify the size of the brush and the photo.

Drag the handles of the image to Recompose your photo. On completion, click the Commit Current Operation icon.

You can use the following options while using the Recompose tool.

Size

Enables you to define the brush size.

Preset

Used to specify the ratio that you want to use for resizing. Preset works on the photo ratio and not the dimensions of the photo. For example, if you use a preset ratio 3x5, the image is resized using this ratio. If you want to scale the photo using the same ratio, hold the Shift key and drag the corner handles. A preset that crops the image in the 16:9 ratio has been added to the Preset menu.

note: If you don’t hold down the Shift key, the image is resized in any ratio.

Threshold

Used to set the Recompose threshold. Setting the threshold to 100% indicates a 100% Recompose. If it is set to 0%, then the behavior of Recompose tool is similar to the Transform tool.

Highlight Skin Tones

Identifies and highlights skin tones for protection. You can preserve regions that contain skin tones. Click the Highlight Skin Tones icon to view the suggested skin tones region. To erase the identified regions that contain skin tones, use the Protect Eraser tool, or right-click the image and select Clear Protect Highlights.

Swap height and width

Used to swap the values specified for height and width. For example, you have specified the following values: H: 10 and W: 15. Click the Swap Height and Width icon to interchange these values. The new values are: H: 15 and W: 10.