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When it was first launched, Photoshop Elements suffered from a bit of an identity crisis. It was a cut-down and less expensive version of Adobe's Photoshop, the program that dominates the professional photo-editing market.
However, to some of us it looked as though Elements was simply a way of recycling old versions of Photoshop.
The program also competed in the consumer market with Photodeluxe, Adobe's cheap-and-cheerful photo editor for beginners.
That left Photoshop Elements uncomfortably squeezed between its two Adobe stablemates. Photodeluxe is likely to be phased out, while Photoshop Elements has just been upgraded to version 2.0.
A comparison with Photoshop is still inevitable. Both programs have the same interface, using floating palettes that can be neatly tucked into the Palette Well in the top right-hand corner of the screen in order to save space and keep things tidy.
The improved File Browser in Elements 2.0 is a direct copy of the same feature that was introduced in Photoshop 7.0. This lets you view any image files on your computer and sort through them using criteria such as name, size, resolution or creation date.
The interface isn't elegant, but it's a handy feature if you have many graphics files.
Elements 2.0 has a number of features that help set it apart from Photoshop, providing greater ease of use for non-professionals and, occasionally, even improving on Photoshop.
One handy feature is the ability to view video clips and then capture individual frames so that you can save and edit them. There's also a feature that'll convert any image into a compressed JPEG, launch your email program and attach the file to a new message.
Another useful timesaver is the QuickFix option, which brings a number of basic editing tools together into a single dialog box. This shows a preview of the image that you're working on and allows you to adjust basic settings such as brightness and contrast, colour correction and lighting levels. From here, you can also alter the image focus and rotate the image.
There are more complex tools in this upgrade as well, such as the new Selection brush. This provides a very precise method for selecting finely detailed elements within an image so that you can cut them out and paste them into new images, or combine them with other images to create a collage.
The brush works well, although you really need to understand how masking and layering techniques work to use this tool properly.
Adobe has improved the online documentation in this version of Elements in order to give new users a bit more help. There's a new glossary in the Help menu, and a number of online tutorials that'll introduce you to basic editing techniques. There's also a handy new Help search feature.
In addition to these new options, there are a number of existing features that have been refined. There are new 'artistic' brushes that let you create natural paint effects, and minor improvements to the various drawing and text tools.
The printing options provide greater versatility when printing multiple images on a single piece of paper, and there are improved options for creating web galleries and stitching multiple photos together to create 360-degree panoramas.
All this makes Photoshop Elements 2.0 a very powerful photo-editing program, probably the most powerful available in the sub-£100 price range.
Fact file
Price: £74.99 (ex. VAT)
Contact: Adobe (020) 8606 4001
Minimum system requirements:
- CPU 133MHz
- Memory 128MB
- Hard disk 150MB
See also:
Paint Shop Pro's little brother is very affordable and crammed with useful features. 11 Jul 2002
Quite simply the best photo editing program in the history of the universe. 15 May 2002
Image-editing software that not only lets you manage, correct and enhance photos, but also allows you to create and publish many types of images. 11 Apr 2002All Image Editing & Management
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