Adobe's laying on the Web subscription message thick in the newest versions of Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Elements. For example the Welcome screen, which is your first encounter with either one of the applications, has completely changed. The standard options of Organize, Edit, Create, and Share get relegated to a task bar that's somewhat unremarkable compared to the large, rotating slide show heralding the many benefits of the free and $49.99 Plus memberships for Photoshop.com (20GB-plus of storage space, remote backup, and project templates). It's honestly couldn't be any more annoying than those pop-up ads you get when your browser is infecte4d. It is really a shame since Photoshop Elements is a great middle of the road photo editor; regrettably all of these bells and whistles detract from the foundation that made it so popular.
The program's main advantage is that it's cheaper than Photoshop and Lightroom, but remains powerful enough for most photo retouching tasks. Thus, the improved raw workflow is quite welcome--improved, in that you can bypass it entirely if you want. For example, to create a slide show of NEF (Nikon raw) files, it simply applies the default raw-processing settings and treats them like JPEGs.
There is also a new text search box in the organizer, which is a fast, easy way to filter by keywords or basic metadata. Be warned however that it is very basic metadata only; you can only search on time, data, camera, and caption text. But that should be sufficient for basic home users.
Of course there is always one feature per version that is designed to blow your socks off; Elements 7 is no different and includes the Photomerge Scene Cleaner, basically an extension of Group Shot. Photomerge allows you to effortlessly combine variations of a photo to remove unwanted objects in the scene. Typically features like these never work for me without a great bit of work on my end; amazingly enough this one did, on two random photos (which met the similarity criteria). I haven't tried the other variations, Photomerge Faces, or Panorama--but those are derivative of existing Photoshop CS3 tools.
Adobe has also streamlined adjustment operations with Smart Brushes, which consolidate multi-operation adjustments, such as selecting then creating a new effects layer, into a single selection operation that automatically generates the layer and mask.
Unfortunately, even with all the new bells and whistles, I can't get around how confusing the user interface is; I think the main reason is that everything seems organized by technology, rather than by task. A hodgepodge of stuff lives on the Guided palette, some of which you can't find elsewhere in the program, like the Photomerge tools, or which don't seem guiding at all, like the Saturated Slide Film effect or the Action Player. The latter runs scripts that request user input, which is why I suspect they're considered Guided, but in that respect they're no different than dialog boxes or Wizards. Before and after views are still only available in Quick Fix and Guided modes. I just can't remember where to find things a lot of the time.
Unfortunately, these are the things that rarely change before the product ships. Stuff that I expect to improve are the performance (the beta is slow) and the selection of presets, actions, and templates (they're pretty thin). But I'll check back when it ships at the end of September and see if there are any pleasant surprises. Price is either $79.99 or $99.99, depending on if you buy it via the Adobe store and/or believe in mail-in rebates. Add $40 for the plus-membership option. - 16651
The program's main advantage is that it's cheaper than Photoshop and Lightroom, but remains powerful enough for most photo retouching tasks. Thus, the improved raw workflow is quite welcome--improved, in that you can bypass it entirely if you want. For example, to create a slide show of NEF (Nikon raw) files, it simply applies the default raw-processing settings and treats them like JPEGs.
There is also a new text search box in the organizer, which is a fast, easy way to filter by keywords or basic metadata. Be warned however that it is very basic metadata only; you can only search on time, data, camera, and caption text. But that should be sufficient for basic home users.
Of course there is always one feature per version that is designed to blow your socks off; Elements 7 is no different and includes the Photomerge Scene Cleaner, basically an extension of Group Shot. Photomerge allows you to effortlessly combine variations of a photo to remove unwanted objects in the scene. Typically features like these never work for me without a great bit of work on my end; amazingly enough this one did, on two random photos (which met the similarity criteria). I haven't tried the other variations, Photomerge Faces, or Panorama--but those are derivative of existing Photoshop CS3 tools.
Adobe has also streamlined adjustment operations with Smart Brushes, which consolidate multi-operation adjustments, such as selecting then creating a new effects layer, into a single selection operation that automatically generates the layer and mask.
Unfortunately, even with all the new bells and whistles, I can't get around how confusing the user interface is; I think the main reason is that everything seems organized by technology, rather than by task. A hodgepodge of stuff lives on the Guided palette, some of which you can't find elsewhere in the program, like the Photomerge tools, or which don't seem guiding at all, like the Saturated Slide Film effect or the Action Player. The latter runs scripts that request user input, which is why I suspect they're considered Guided, but in that respect they're no different than dialog boxes or Wizards. Before and after views are still only available in Quick Fix and Guided modes. I just can't remember where to find things a lot of the time.
Unfortunately, these are the things that rarely change before the product ships. Stuff that I expect to improve are the performance (the beta is slow) and the selection of presets, actions, and templates (they're pretty thin). But I'll check back when it ships at the end of September and see if there are any pleasant surprises. Price is either $79.99 or $99.99, depending on if you buy it via the Adobe store and/or believe in mail-in rebates. Add $40 for the plus-membership option. - 16651
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