Adobe Photoshop Elements Buries Its LE Past
Alan Stafford
IMAGE EDITINGDo you want to fix up photos from a digital camera or scanner without having to master a high-end graphics program? Photoshop Elements, the new image editor from Adobe Systems, provides a robust mix of features and enough hand-holding to help novice and intermediate users. I looked at a beta version.
It replaces Photoshop LE, which lacked full versions of Photoshop's best features and made only a feeble attempt to help users learn the program.
By contrast, the $99 Elements boasts tools not found in Photoshop that help you learn standard graphics procedures. Recipes, which are text-based instructional procedures housed in a palette, help with tasks such as color correction. The application shows you how to do something, but it won't apply the fixes for you--you have to do most of the work yourself, which lets you learn to use the tools.
A new red-eye-reduction brush works similarly to MGI PhotoSuite's. Wipe the brush over the demonized pupil; the first point you click sets the color to be corrected. PhotoSuite's tool requires less precision, but that's the only advantage that program has.
Vector-based shapes and text are rare in low-priced graphics applications; Elements includes both. Type text onto the canvas or add shadows and bevels, and the text remains sharp at any resolution. Elements' Fill Flash tool does an easy and competent job of brightening a photo.
One included feature sorely missing from Photoshop LE was multilevel undo. Elements allows you to map multiple undo/redo steps to the new History palette (cataloging every action you implement), so you can step forward and backward.
Elements cannot work in CMYK (four-color) mode, necessary for professional printing. However, instead of refusing to open such files, Elements offers the option of converting them to RGB format. It can also handle Encapsulated PostScript files.
Elements lacks such PhotoShop features as curves, color channels, and perhaps most important, masking, which lets you protect areas of an image from change. (The new app can create adjustment layers, to tweak an image without affecting the underlying base.)
For most users, Elements has it all over every other image-editing application except for Photoshop, the leading application in the field.
| Buying Information |
Photoshop Elements Helps you learn without getting in your way. Lacks high-end Photoshop features. An excellent mix of features for the money; ideal for intermediate-level users. List price: $99 Adobe Systems 800/833-6687 http://www.adobe.com |