Product Reviews

Photoshop Elements has one big advantage over its many rivals in the photo-editing market: it can borrow features from its big brother, the professional version of Photoshop.

One key new feature in this latest version of Elements is a technology called Photomerge, which comes straight from Photoshop. As the name implies, it allows you to merge elements taken from multiple photos to create seamless composite images.

There are two main ways of using this new feature. You can use it as a special effects trick to combine people's faces or, as Adobe puts it, "you can combine your face with your current squeeze to see how your offspring would look". To do this, you simply open a couple of photos and then select the Photomerge option from the main File menu. This places a set of markers on each photo, which are used to align the photos correctly. You can then use the brush tool to pick out elements from one photo - such as the eyes and nose - and copy them across to the second photo to create a merged image.

However, there's also a more practical use for Photomerge, as you can use it with group shots as well. Instead of just combining facial elements, you can take a person entirely out of one shot and move them into another. We had a chance to put Photomerge to the test a few days after we installed Elements 6. We were in the park with some friends and their children, but getting them to smile angelically at exactly the same time proved a bit tricky. Loading the photos into Elements,

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we used the Photomerge Groups option to pick the best bits out of each photo in order to create the perfect group shot.

Photomerge is a very powerful editing tool, and it certainly throws down a gauntlet to rivals such as Corel's Paint Shop Pro. Our only criticism is that we did struggle a bit with the online Help files, and it took us a little while to experiment with the Photomerge options before we understood how to use them properly.

Other aspects of the program have been simplified and made easier to use. For complete beginners, there's a new Guided editing mode to help you get started. Just click the Guided button in the right-hand corner of the screen and you'll see a list of common tasks, such as cropping an image or correcting colour balance. When you select a task, the program displays step-by-step instructions that show you which tools to select and how to apply them to your photos.

Most photo-editing programs provide similar instructions for beginners, but we particularly appreciated the option to view 'before' and 'after' versions of your photos. This makes it easier to see how your changes affect each photo. There's also detailed help provided for projects such as creating a photo gallery for a website or using photos to create calendars and cards.

We do have a couple of complaints. We didn't like the murky grey used throughout the interface. More importantly, Elements is now split into two separate programs. The Organiser, which allows you to view and sort through your collection of photos quickly, is separate from the main Editor program. Having to switch back and forth between the two programs can be irritating. We also got the occasional annoying error message telling us we couldn't switch from the Editor to the Organiser because "the Organiser is busy".

The integration between the Editor and Organiser programs could be improved. Even so, Photoshop Elements still manages to stand out from rivals such as Corel's Paint Shop Pro thanks to its combination of powerful editing tools, easy-to-use interface and attractive price.