Thread: Adobe Photoshop Elements 6

Adobe Photoshop Elements has enjoyed the position of top dog in the nonprofessional image¬editing world for as long as most people have been taking digital cameras on

holiday. But Elements isn't just for holiday snaps, as well as serious amateur photographers, the program has also found favour with many professional photographers for whom full-blown Photoshop CS3 is overkill.

In this latest version Adobe has attempted to continue to appeal to all comers by revamping the interface and including more guidance for digital editing tasks, while at the same time harnessing Photoshop's raw power to provide tools and features that will appeal to more ambitious photographers.



The first thing that will strike anyone familiar with previous versions is how different Elements 6 looks. Adobe has overhauled the interface and along with the new charcoal colour scheme it exudes a more serious, professional and complicated feel. As before, there are essentially two applications - a photo organiser and an editing tool.

The new organiser now has four tabs labelled Organize, Fix, Create and Share. Some ofthe one-click fixes available from the Fix tab in the Organiser do just that. Auto Smart fix, for example, runs a script that appears to apply levels and colour adjustments. If these fixes aren't doing the job you can enter the editing application in one of three working modes - Quick Fix, Full Edit, or Guided Edit, above which sit three more tabs that allow switching from editing to creating or sharing.

All these tabbed modes doubtless make everything appear well-organised, but we think new users could well be confused and maybe even a little intimidated by the plethora oftabbed panels.

Quick Fix isn't new, but it does provide a one-stop shop for many of the image-enhancing tools you're likely to need. These include Smart Fix, Red-eye Fix, lighting and colour adjustments, and sharpening. As well as having sliders for each of these, there are auto buttons that will do the guess-work for you and, at the very least, offer a start point for your own tweaking.

The new guided editing mode takes you through basic editing tasks such as cropping and straightening, correcting skin tones, retouching and using the new Photomerge features. Too often though, the guidance consists of little more than a single-sentence explanation of a slider's function. For example, Enhance Colour is a hue, saturation and lightness control with an auto option and explanations that hue 'changes the colours in the photo', saturation 'changes the intensity of the colour or hue' and lightness 'changes the brightness of the colours all of which becomes fairly evident when you move the sliders.

Adobe rarely fails to endow a new release with at least one great new feature and Elements 6 is no exception. Photomerge Group Shot combines several group photos to produce the perfect shot - no-one with their eyes shut or looking at their feet. Similar blending technology is employed in another new feature, Photomerge Faces. This seamlessly blends features from two or more portraits.

Adobe has also improved the already excellent Photomerge panorama feature, added a new Quick Selection tool and improved integration with the Premiere Elements video-editing application. All great new additions, but we were left wondering if, in trying to please everyone, Photoshop Elements' reputation for intuitive ease of use isn't being submerged.

Conclusion
Of the five applications in this software group test, two are clear front-runners: Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 and Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2. Both programs started out from a similar place and are travelling in the same direction. Looking for a way to harness the power of Photoshop for non-professionals, Adobe came up with Photoshop Elements, which continues to provide all the best bits of Photoshop in an easy-to-use and understandable wrapper.

When Corel bought Paint Shop Pro from lasc it was a powerful photo editor with a loyal following of users desirous of Photoshop performance without the high price.
Corel has since made the program easier to use, adding interactive guidance and a wealth of one-step fixes. It has done all of this while at the same time maintaining Paint Shop Pro Photo's appeal to advanced users and adding to an array of image manipulation and adjustment tools.

This latest release adds HDR photo merging, a Layer Styles tool and visible watermarking to the program's high-end feature list. Paint Shop Pro X2 therefore gets our must use tag. We'd like to see Paint Shop Pro continue in this vein by rationalising and improving the effectiveness of its advanced editing tools. It would also reassure existing users if Corel could settle on its latest photo-management application, Media One, which is the third change in as many updates.

Though it wasn't first to market with its photo merge group shot feature, Adobe's Photoshop Elements has shown how it should be done with an easy-to-use tool that has really caught the current mood for pushing the boundaries of everyday photography. Most of us have appeared in group photos looking less than our best, so the ability to choose the good bits from a sequence of shots is something that everyone will appreciate.

We think Adobe should take a step back and put the organisation of the Elements workspace at the top of its priorities for future releases. We'd like to see better integration of the Organiser and Editor, fewer tabbed panels and improved guidance.
Despite these concerns, Photoshop Elements still provides the best all-round combination of ease of use, advanced editing controls and innovative new features, and for that reason gets our Best on Test.