When Adobe Elements first came out a number of years ago, I remember seeing it at a local electronics retailer and arching an eyebrow at the box. A die hard Photoshop user even then, I remember not thinking much of the heavily consumer driven program. However, as time has passed and Adobe has continued to upgrade theElements line, my opinion has changed dramatically. While, it won’t convince those who own Photoshop CS3 Extended to downgrade, PhotoshopElements has become a seriously useful program for new filmmakers who can’t afford the ten-times-more-expensive PSCS3E. (Plus, if you decide to get it bundled with Premiere Elements 4, it’s an even more cost-effective choice.)
PhotoshopElements 6 has taken this continuing improvement to a new level, with a wizard that helps new users and some new features and enhancements that make it worth checking out. With that said, let’s look at the different elements of PhotoshopElements 6.
In the new & improved Organizer, you can use keyword tags, albums, and star ratings to categorize and manage your photos..
Ease of Use
The original versions of PhotoshopElements were extremely easy to use for your total graphic novice, but were so limited that there were very few professional features. As upgrades have come and more and more abilities have been added from the professional Photoshop line, Adobe has worked really hard to keep PhotoshopElements easy to pick up.
In the past, they have done this by having options for limited editing or full editing, so that new users don’t get overwhelmed by too many options. In the newest edition, to further simplify this pursuit, they have created a new “Guided Editing” menu, which gives you step by step instructions for common tasks like: blemish removal, tint replacement, red eye removal, wizards for making common print elements, and a variety of other options. This really helps make the more complex features easy for anyone to pick up, and even experienced Photoshop users might find some helpful tips in this section. (As most Photoshop users tend to do, I had gotten into habits withPhotoshop that ignored some of the newer Photoshop features, because the old ways worked just fine. However, after going through some of this guided training and seeing a few powerful tools that I hadn’t explored, I found my eyes opened nicely!)
In addition to this new feature, PSE6 showcases streamlined improvements in creating black and white photos, removing unwanted details, exporting out to Flash galleries, and the like, which further keeps this program simple to use.
Now in Photoshop Elements 6, you can use a single tool to easily combine the best facial expressions and body language from a series of group shots to create a single composite.
Depth of Options
While PSE6 still doesn’t have some of the cooler features of the professional line of Photoshop, like Photo Filters, Vanishing Point, and the extremely useful Warp Command, it does have a pretty nice array of abilities. (And, sometimes, Elements roll out new abilities BEFORE the pro line. This is most noticeable in the “Convert to Black-and-White” option, which came out in Elements5, but only recently came out in PhotoshopCS3. While there are more color adjustment options in PSCS3 than in PSE5/6, it is interesting to see how Adobe tests the usefulness of certain features in their more consumer-focused line of products.)
With that, I’ll cover the two predominant, creative features as well as some of the many, more prevalent improvements.
Utilizing the Photomerge technology, that was unveiled in PhotoshopCS2 and PhotoshopElements 5 for stitching together panoramas, Adobe has refined this technology in PSE6 to allow you to combine multiple takes of group photos to get rid of awkward frowns, blinks, etc. This is a technique that has been used manually, by many sure-handed photo technicians, and it is nice to see it included in the Elements line, especially now that so many of digital cameras have a burst-photograph mode.
The other new feature is an extremely silly, but fun, new addition. It is the ability to merge faces together, combining eyes, noses, and other features. While most filmmakers will probably not use this often, it is a great feature, if you want to create your own late night talk show that looks at what celebrities’ babies would look like, if they had kids together.
With that said, let’s move on to the improvements. A newly enhanced selection technology, called the “Brush Selection Tool,” seems to be based on the “Quick Selection Tool” unveiled in Photoshop CS3. However, unlike CS3’s “QST,” where brush strokes allow the program to make a “Smart-Selection,” the “Brush Selection Tool” allows you to simply paint a selection. This gives a very nice level of manual control and is a useful feature that I would like to see added to PSCS4.
Additional improvements, related to filmmaking, have been added to these features: the Black-and-White conversion tool now gives you a larger preview image; the Photomerge Panorama tool has been improved to give higher quality results in more real-world situations; the Brightness/Contrast tool now features the more Photo-friendly algorithm seen in PhotoshopCS2 & CS3; and the Clone and Healing brushes now allow you to preview changes to your original photo, before you commit to them with the new Overlay option.
