Photoshop Elements review

The range of cut-down power on offer in Photoshop Elements is thought through much better than it was in Photoshop LE, and Adobe has also recognised the need to add new power. While Photoshop concentrates on providing professional functionality for intensive work on single projects, the typical Photoshop Elements user is more likely to be dealing with multiple digital-camera images. In other words, Photoshop Elements must tackle the whole area of PC photography.

One major need for the PC photographer is the ability to view multiple images, and Photoshop Elements enables this with its File Browser palette. This lets you move through your hard disk to select any directory at the top of the palette, and automatically generates thumbnails of all the images it finds. It's certainly a lot easier than dealing with images via their file names, but it's hardly state-of-the-art. The generation is slow and there are no file-management or cataloguing capabilities, let alone more advanced album-based features such as slide shows.

When you've opened an image, your first job is to make it look its best. In Photoshop this involves some serious digging, but in Photoshop Elements all functionality has been brought together under the Enhance menu. For serious control you've still got access to the histogram-based Levels command, but occasional users will feel more comfortable with the AutoLevels, AutoContrast and Variations commands. Two simple options that photographers will welcome have also been added: Back Light helps correct underexposure while Fill Flash lightens shadows.

Two other common photo-editing tasks are also catered for with new functionality. Correcting red eye is simple thanks to the new Red Eye tool - simply choose a brush size and a tolerance level and then click on the offending colour. Creating a panorama should also be largely automatic thanks to the new Photo Merge command. Ideally, all you should have to do is select a directory containing the images and Photoshop Elements will automatically sort them, resizing, skewing and blending where necessary. In practice I found it necessary to position the images manually and, even then, the fact that Photo Merge makes no attempt to colour-correct the results means that the joins are very clear.

Stand out from the crowd

Once you've enhanced your photo, you can make it really stand out with the range of almost 100 filters. As Photoshop users know, the problem with such a wide selection is that it's difficult to know which to choose - the Reticulation or Mezzotint? Photoshop Elements addresses this with its Filters palette, which shows thumbnails of a yacht image with each effect applied. It must have taken an afternoon for the Adobe programmers to knock up, but being able to choose an effect visually makes a huge difference.

Another example of making the most of existing power is the Effects palette. This offers around 50 effects, such as Drop Shadow, Soft Focus and Sandpaper, divided into four main categories - Frames, Image Effects, Text Effects and Textures. Each effect is actually built up of a combination of existing commands so that the Wood Frame effect, for example, is built by increasing the canvas size, creating a new layer and selection, filling it, and then applying noise, motion blur, bevelling and shadowing. This can be useful but the problem is that each effect is fixed and there's no way of customising it.

Once your masterwork is complete you're ready to output it. Photoshop Elements offers a basic print preview, but to save expensive photo paper you need to be able to output multiple copies on the same sheet. To do this you have to resort to the File | Automate | Picture Package command, which lets you choose between various standard layouts and resolutions. Once you click OK, Photoshop Elements creates a new image and proceeds to paste, rotate and resize the desired number of copies onto it. It's exactly the same command as you get in Photoshop itself but frankly it's embarrassing - and it doesn't let you print more than one image on each sheet.