Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 is not a major update to the product, in fact as far as new and improved features go there are not many. However, the new and improved features are not only highly useful they are very impressive and fun as well. Who is Photoshop Elements 8 for? Well, it is for anyone with a digital camera or scanner that wants powerful features in a user friendly interface and at an affordable price. The biggest question is what product do you need Adobe Photoshop Elements or the full version of Photoshop in the form of CS4? I think that question is a lot easier to answer than most people realize.
Photoshop Elements 8 has nearly all of the features the average digital camera or scanner owner is going to need, probably more than what they need. If you are a professional photographer or if you do prepress then the full version of Photoshop maybe more to your liking. I would also recommend the full version of Photoshop if you do many different things. For example if you do photography, web design, video editing, 3D work and things like that then the full version of Photoshop is really going to pay off because it has features for all of that.
But, if your main goal is to work with images from your point and shoot digital camera or your micro four thirds camera or entry level dSLR then Elements is going to be a very good choice.
My only concern about Photoshop Elements for these user's is that if you shoot raw you loose a lot of feature in ACR by using it in Photoshop Elements. To get all of the ACR features you have to buy the full version of Photoshop. This I think is not only very unfair, but totally inappropriate of Adobe. Myself I would like to see Adobe charge say $20 or $30 more for Elements and include the full version of ACR with it. Or offer the full version of ACR as an extra cost upgrade for those that want it. Just because you don't need all of the features of the full version of Photoshop doesn't mean you don't need the full capabilities of ACR.
To understand just how wrong I think this is you really need to understand just how limited ACR is under Photoshop Elements. You loose nearly three quarters of ACR's features. That is a massive loss and it honestly makes ACR near worthless.
Ok, with that rant out of the way I want to cover the new and improved features in Photoshop Elements 8. New and improved features include:
New
- Do you have hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands of images? Do you like sorting through them look for just the best ones? Well what if you didn't have to? What if the organizer that you catalog your images and videos with could go through and analyse the images and videos tagging the good ones, tagging the bad ones and even do such wonderful things as telling you which ones are blurred, which ones have exposure issues and more? Well, your in luck the organizer can now do this and it does it surprisingly well, fast and easily.
- Now what if you also have lots of pictures with people. Wouldn't it be cool if you could have the organizer look at the photos and tell you who is in them and then tag those images with the persons name? Well, it can. With a little training of the organizer on your part it will soon be recognizing your friends and family members by name and tagging the images making it easy for you to find images of Uncle Fried, Aunt Sally or Cousin Thing.
- If you sign up for a photoshop.com account or a photoshop.com plus account you can share your videos and photos across all of your computers. That is until you run out of online storage. Using the automatic sync features your photos and videos will be available on any computer with or without Photoshop Elements, though you do have a lot more options and features with Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements for the video. You get 2GB of storage with the free photoshop.com account and 20GB with the $49.95 photoshop.com plus account.
- Photoshop Elements 8 full supports the new Windows 7 and is even logo certified.
- Have you ever had an image that you wished you could change the compisition on, the layout, the size, the aspect ratio? Well using content aware scaling in Photoshop Elements 8 you can now do that. You can protect an area of the image and then resize the image down removing the unwanted areas, you can protect and area and enlarge the image. Imagine that you have a family photo and you need to take it from a 3:2 ratio to a 3:3 ratio for a scrapbook project, well using this new technology you can do this without a loss of image quality.
- Digital cameras all digital cameras have problems with proper exposure. No matter how good you are there are times when it just isn't possible to get all of the highlights and all of the shadows in your image. You have to sacrifice one or the other. Well, now thanks to new Photomerge Exposure technology you simply take two pictures using a tripod one with flash and one without, Photoshop Elements will then combine them in to one near perfect exposure.
- The old variations feature that has been in the full version of Photoshop for ages has never not only been moved over to Photoshop Elements it has been improved and expanded. Now you can make common image adjustments like color, contrast and lighting using thumbnails of your image. No more guessing how much to move this or that slider. Just adjust it until you like what you see.
Improved
- The included organizer not only helps you organize your photos but videos as well and the organizer is now included with Premiere Elements 8 so once you have your photos and videos cataloged both programs can access it. While this may seem like small thing video capabilities with still cameras is a hot new technology and one that is becoming ever more important. It is nice having one organizer for the two programs, this makes it easier to manage your files without having to deal with duplicate files and catalogs as well are different management programs with different features.
- The Organizer now offers full screen previews of your photos and videos, no more trying to decide if a photo or video is what you want based on a tiny thumbnail version of it. See the full thing, see it large, see it with detail.
- If you have a photoshop.com plus account you have access to new tutorials right from inside of Photoshop Elements. With an ever changing and increasing number and variety of tutorials you will quickly learn the ins and outs of Elements. A photoshop.com plus account is $49.95 extra per year and offers other benefits besides the tutorials.
- Photoshop Elements 8 now includes hundreds of frames, themes, backgrounds, clipart and effects in the Artwork palette. This is perfect for scrapbooking and other photo craft projects including photo book creation.
- Do you need some help with layout ideas? No problem Photoshop Elements 8 includes an expanded selection of print layouts for scrapbook pages, photo books, cards and more. Plus if you have a photoshop.com plus account you have access to even more.
- Want to share your photos, videos and projects with others? Friends, family? Well not a problem. Just sign up for a free photoshop.com account or buy a photoshop.com plus account for $49.95 and you can share your work with others online, all right from within Photoshop Elements 8.
As I said there aren't a lot of new and improved features, but what is there is stellar, fun, useful and practical. New and improved features aside Photoshop Elements 8 is a great product perfect for the average non-professional photographer. While it is lacking some of the high end features of its bit brother Photoshop CS4 it has everything that the average snapshot taker is going to need and if you are in to scrapbooking and photo books it is an even better value.
