Product Reviews

Despite being a budget version of Photoshop, Elements has emerged from the shadow of its professional sibling to become the affordable tool of choice for editing and organising digital snapshots. Photoshop Elements 6 has a lot to live up to, and although it's still split into its familiar Organizer and Editor modules, it now sports a sober dark slate background that reflects its increasingly ambitious remit.

Organizer remains an outstanding way to manage media. Its ability to organise via keywords has already been enhanced by features such as facial recognition and stacks, which reduce clutter by gathering related photos into piles. But Organizer keeps on improving, this time with smart albums. The contents of each album can be defined by multiple criteria, for example keywords or star ratings. Images matching those criteria are automatically shown in the album. Because smart albums can also filter based on embedded metadata, you can automatically sort images from a particular camera, or taken using a certain lens, into specified smart albums as they are imported.

Adobe is still struggling to sort an increasing number of features into a logical visual structure. Organizer's many options are now corralled into task-related tabs. In most cases this works, but it can get confusing. For example, the Create tab, which uses step-by-step wizards to create photo books, calendars, galleries and slideshows, also appears in the Editor, but tasks are split between

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the two: you create a photo collage or book in the Editor, online galleries or slideshows in the Organizer. It's fine once you're used to it, but can easily frustrate newcomers. It's also odd that you can create an online gallery from two tabs in each workspace, but the fact that you can quicklycreate gorgeous Flash-based online galleries of your photos more than compensates.

Getting into a mode

As before, the Editor's features are accessible in multiple modes. A largely unchanged Quick Fix mode offers speedy access to popular correction tasks. Changes are made by dragging sliders in a task pane next to a split-screen editing window that previews the effect. The Full Edit mode, which serious users will stick to most of the time, gets moderate improvements to the Healing and Clone Stamp tools and a new Quick Selection feature. This borrows the principles behind the existing Magic Extraction brush to help guide a selection based on colour or texture. The advantage is that you can use it directly in the editing window rather than a separate box.

Between Quick Fix and Full Edit is a new Guided Edit mode that lists common tasks, such as sharpening or exposure adjustment. Click on a task and the tools to accomplish it are shown, along with explanatory text. It's an excellent idea, and although not all editing functions are available, it covers the most important tasks.

Elements 6 also has three new Photomerge features. Panorama does a good job of stitching successive shots together, usually with little intervention needed. A more gimmicky Faces tool lets you combine facial elements to create a composite. Best of all is the Group Shot feature: choose two or more images and drag the selection tool around the parts of each that you want to keep. Those are added to a master image containing the best elements. It works wonderfully well.

Photoshop Elements is an excellent choice for newcomers looking for a powerful photo editing and organising tool. It would be a stretch, though, to call this a must-have upgrade.