Photoshop Elements Version 8

Reviewed by Ted Bade

Adobe Corporation http://www.adobe.com/ http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelmac/  $100 USD (MSRP) Released: September 23, 2009 Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later. 512 MB RAM, 64 MB Video RAM, 2 BGX Hard drive space, DVD-ROM drive, QuickTime 7, Internet connection.   Strengths: Great features, lots of power, many easy to use enhancements, easy interface. Weaknesses: Installation is odd, some issues with Bridge.

Introduction

Adobe has released a new version of Photoshop Elements, the consumer level version of Photoshop. Along with application enhancements and improvements, this version adds easy access to a number of interesting ways to enhance photos. As always, Elements offers much of the power of Photoshop with an interface that is significantly easier to learn and use. It is a great addition to any Mac’s suite of applications.

 

Photoshop Elements and its helper program, Adobe Bridge, make it easy to edit and enhance your photos. It provides lots and lots of features that can tweak a mediocre image creating a good or even great one. Let’s face it, we all take pictures but most of us don’t have a clue about lighting or composition, and no matter where you are, somebody always manages to walk into that perfect scene! Let us not forget that conditions aren’t always perfect and, unlike a professional photographer, you don’t have time on your one-week vacation to wait for conditions to allow for that perfect scene. So we turn to Elements to enhance the photos.

 

 

Version 8 has all the features in previous versions of Photoshop Elements. I am going to focus on newer features I found useful. I assume the reader is probably familiar with the basic features of Elements. Let us just say that Elements provides a wealth of features, which give even the most basic user the ability to change dull photos into rich and beautiful ones. It offers different interface levels, from guided (which walks the user through the process), to quick (using simple sliders to instantly enhance a photo), and to full (where the more advanced user can use a variety of tools to enhance the photo). No matter the interface level, the full power of the program is available to the user.

 

This version of Elements offers several new features that make it easy to “correct” an image, making it more pleasant to the eye. I use the quotation marks, because the correction doesn’t necessarily make the image closer to reality, but closer to the ideal. For instance, we have all taken photos of scenery with a dull hazy sky. The scene might be nice, but the image would be a lot more pleasant if the sky was blue instead of gray or grayish white. Elements 8 has a touch up brush designed to add blue to a washed out sky. I tried it on some of my vacation photos and was quite pleased with the results.  Adding the blue sky makes the image richer and a lot more pleasant. Although the photo isn’t a true image of what was, the results are more how I remember the shot ☺.

 

 (Notice how the bluer sky brings out the blue in the lake and the boat)

 

When I use software to enhance an image, I often try several different settings before I am satisfied. Sometimes I have to go back and try something a second time to be sure I like it less or perhaps better then another setting. Which leads me to another new feature I found very useful. When using Element’s quick fix editing, you can choose a preview function to show several previews of how your image would look using various levels of an enhancement. You don’t need to know what the settings do or how they are set, you simply choose the preview you like the most and save it. Although the preview thumbnails are kind of small, as you mouse them, the larger “after” image on the main window changes to show what this effect does. Additionally, Elements chooses one of the previews as the best option for the image, which you can agree or disagree with. The program also allows you to make a fine adjustment to each setting before saving it. In my example, I decided that I wanted a bit more intensity in my image to enhance the New England scenery.

 

(Notice the symbol on the center image, that is Element’s choice, I liked the richer colors)

 

While I am not one to concern myself with how nice teeth look in a photo, there are people who do. Elements version 8 includes another enhancement brush that is designed to easily whiten teeth. The magic of the brush isn’t in whitening, but in being smart enough to whiten only the teeth of an image. The brush works pretty well overall. Since teeth tend to be a smaller part of an image, it is necessary to select a smaller brush or you will end up whitening the person’s face. Once you get the brush size reduced and zoom into the teeth, the correction is quick and very effective.

 

Elements 8 has includes the ability to perform a series of actions to a photo to create some effect. Most of the included actions add artistic effects to your photo. For instance, you can fade the ink to simulate a sepia image, or create a snapshot layout with a border and space for a caption. There is also one to make the subject look a little thinner ;-). The actions included in Elements 8 aren’t something I would regularly use. But the ability to script a series of actions I nice. Action sets can be imported from those created by Photoshop, provided the components of the action are supported by Elements. There doesn’t seem to be a way to create action sets in Elements.

 

There are a number of preset “Artistic” effects available in the guided edit as well. For instance you can create a line drawing from your image, turn it into an “old fashioned” photo, or apply a saturated slide film effect. While adjustments on these effects are limited, they work pretty well.

 

(I am such an “artist”, LOL)

 

Have you ever tried to create an image, only to find that somebody unwanted stepped into it at the last moment? I am sure we all have. If only a small part of the person is in the image you can sometimes edit or crop out that small piece, but when the moving person it squarely in the frame, you really cannot do anything. That is unless you managed to take a second shot and use a new feature in Elements 8. This new feature, called Clean Scene, allows you to combine pieces of two images to remove an unwanted person moving through the image. This feature works by combining the unobstructed side of one image with the unobstructed side of a second image, to create a single image with no obstructions. Obviously, to make this work, you need to have taken two images that the program can work with. But it does the job very well. Alternately, you could wait until no one else is around or hire an army of people to clear the space, but taking two images and processing out the interference is probably the easiest solution!

 

Another useful people related feature is the ability to recompose images after they are taken. Elements 8 has the ability to reconfigure an image without adding significant distortion. One example is taking a picture of a group of people in landscape view. Let’s imagine that you would like to use the image in a card, so you need the group shot in portrait view. If you simply crop the image, some members of the group will be cut off or even cut out. Elements 8 allows you to scrunch the image to bring all the people together, without significantly distorting the image. It is an interesting effect. This effect works well for most backgrounds, but I saw a bit of distortion with an image that included parallel vertical bars in the background. But let’s face it, the program can’t perform miracles ;-)

 

Besides editing your images, Photoshop Elements 8 provides a variety of tools for presenting them to others. It has options for composing and creating Photo Books, Greeting cards, prints, photo collages, web galleries, and even to create a slide show in PDF format.

 

Photoshop Elements 8 comes with Adobe Bridge version 8. This version of Bridge has been enhanced a bit as well. You can now flip through images in full screen mode rather then just as thumbnails. Additionally, you can view a slide show of any folder of images. Bridge provides easy access to folders containing images and offers several functions that allow you to organize and move your photos about.

 

(This is a stock image, not mine)

 

My experience with Photoshop Elements version 8 wasn’t perfect. I don’t know if it is just me, but I found the installation process a bit odd. You have to open the CD then open the Elements folder to locate a program called “Setup”. I ran “Setup” and suddenly an oddly named drive image appeared on my desktop. I imagine many people don’t watch the install process, but I generally do. Having drives appear on the screen that don’t have names related to the product I am installing gives me the creeps! It is soooo PCish. But I guess that is the direction Adobe has taken.

 

Once the new application was installed, I was a bit surprised to find the application icon to be a rather drab one. Elements 6 had a cute circular icon with a camera shape in it. The new one is simply a light blue rectangle with darker blue PSE in it. Dull. I am getting the impression here that Adobe is trying to change their market image toward a rather drab business market rather then toward a fun home or artistic market. Which is odd, since Element’s splash screen and box image are a terrific “Alice in Wonderland-ish” image, which I think creates a sense of artistry and is not drab. Go figure.

 

I didn’t run into any real problems running Elements, but I had Bridge 8 lockup and crash on me in several instances. This was mainly when I tried to move several images I had edited from the temporary folder I had placed them in for editing, into other folders that organize the images. What I do, for example, is select a group of images, say flowers, in the temporary folder, then right click on them and select the “Move To” contextual menu, then select the folder I want to save these images to. Generally when I choose more then one image to move, Bridge locked up. I had to force quit, then restart it. Usually after the restart, I would be able to move the images.

 

Conclusion

 

Overall, I feel that Photoshop Elements is the best home consumer option for editing and enhancing images. It offers a tremendous amount of photo editing power, and a multitude of ways to enhance, modify, organize, and enhance your images. The User Interface is relatively easy to use and editing functions can be accessed as guided functions for the beginner or without guidance for the more experienced user. Photoshop Elements puts a lot of power at the user’s fingertips, truly more then I regularly use! If you are looking to buy a program to enhance your photos, you won’t go wrong with Photoshop Elements 8.