Product Reviews

Photoshop may be the king of photo editing applications, but for novice users the price and the vast feature set can combine to make its crown too big for comfort. For those who don't need its full features, or who simply want to experiment with photo manipulation, Photoshop Elements 2.0 is a compromise between power and ease of use.

Many of the new features from Photoshop 7 have been incorporated into this release, including the new Brush Engine, albeit in a rather cut-down form. But where huge brushes paint smoothly in Photoshop, the equivalents in Elements are sluggish: the 100-pixel Rough Round Bristle, which loads as the default brush, is so slow and jerky as to be almost unusable.

Elements offers its version of Photoshop's QuickMask, which allows users to paint selections in and out, either from scratch or by modifying other selections, such as those made by the Magic Wand.

Switching to this Selection Brush tool converts any existing selections to the QuickMask-like red overlay, and changing to a different selection tool converts them to the familiar 'marching ants' outlines once again. Curiously, selecting with the Magic Wand or Marquee tools occasionally results in a red mask selection for no apparent reason, although this is erratic and hard to reproduce. Overall, this selection technique is to be welcomed as it provides an easier set of tools than the simple Lasso/Marquee combination.

Installing the software under Mac OS X brought its own problems. The folder containing the application showed that all its files had been modified around 7pm on the day of installation - six hours later than the time on the system clock. The first message on opening Elements 2.0 was a dialog stating that certain colour components could not be found, and the installer disk refused to be ejected, producing a Disk is Busy error message.

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Apart from these bugs, Elements 2.0 offers plenty of new and enhanced features. The File Browser, which was included in Elements before it

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made its appearance in Photoshop 7, has been enhanced to provide increased speed and the ability to capture EXIF data from digital cameras.

Automated file handling elements, such as the Straighten and Crop command, make quick fixes for images simpler than ever, while the new Attach to Email feature takes the guesswork out of making an image small enough to transmit quickly. Those with digital cameras will also value the Batch Processing utilities, which allow a folder full of images to be renamed, resized and converted to different file formats in a single action, and the ability to create PDF slide shows makes image sharing that much simpler. Picture package layouts enable images to be printed in multiple combinations to save inkjet paper, and users can create their own layouts by defining them within a text file stored in a separate folder.

The addition of a History palette, a cut-down version of that found in Photoshop, aids the editing process, providing a visual clue to multiple undos. The Photomerge engine, which combines multiple shots into a single panoramic image, has been enhanced, and now includes perspective correction with a sophisticated Vanishing Point tool to straighten the end result. It's an impressive technology that has yet to be built into Photoshop, and is a compelling reason for even die-hard Photoshop users to buy Elements.

The aim of Elements is to make image editing easier for novices. To that end, it abounds with tips and techniques to guide users through the options: a Hints palette explains the use of each tool with great clarity, using simple visuals to show their operation. For those wishing to experiment with more complex techniques, a How To palette talks through the 'recipe' steps involved in such tasks as removing red eye, creating animated GIFs and adding special effects to text.

While Elements 2.0 has much to offer home users, it has been deliberately crippled to prevent professionals using it for prepress work. There's no CMYK mode, no Pen tool, which means no clipping paths, and no Curves dialog.

However, anyone who needs an image editing application for Web design would find Elements more than up to the job. This release incorporates a slew of new features, but suffers from a few bugs, which should have been ironed out at the beta stage. While the new Brush Engine is a welcome addition, it seems to be overreaching its capabilities within the cut-down Photoshop framework.

Elements 2.0 remains the image editor of choice for those who don't need the full power of Photoshop, but occasionally promises more than it can deliver.