Now that you've seen how to make manual adjustments to exposure, color and contrast, we'll take a quick look at several of the automated features commonly found in most photo-editing software programs.

The videos below demonstrate three of the automatic image enhancement functions found in Photoshop Elements 3.0. If you use a different editor, they may be called something else. Check your documentation or help facility for details.

When editing an image, it's always a good idea to try auto-enhancement or 'Quick-Fix' functions first. You may find that your software does a perfectly acceptable job of correcting color and contrast. If you don't like the results of the auto-correction, you can 'Undo' the change, or make additional adjustments beyond those done by the automatic features.

Remember, always make a duplicate copy of the image upon which to make your edits. If your editor does not have a command to create a duplicate, use the windows operating system to make the duplicate copy.