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In Elements 6, the Photomerge Panorama has been enhanced, making it easier than ever to blend together your favorite landscape shots, featuring new detection and blending algorithms, so you have the choice of four completely automated ways to create seamless panoramas that don’t require any manual adjustments or fine tuning.
For an example, I started with these two shots of the lake my house is situated on (although you don't have to limit yourself to two).
Either choose File > New > Photomerge Panorama if you're in Photoshop Elements, or if you're starting from the Bridge, it's Tools > Photoshop Elements > Photomerge Panorama.
I used the Photomerge dialog Elements 6 to select the two source jpgs from the Finder, and chose "Auto" as the panorama mode I wanted to use, then hit OK and let the Elements magic do its stuff.
It took a minute or so on my old G4 PowerBook (would be much faster on a MacIntel), and the routine eventually produced this composite image.
Pretty amazing, I think, - almost magical, and that's just a basic merge of two photos. Photomerge Panorama offers an array of tools and effects you can use to manipulate your panorama.
I then cropped out the largest possible rectangular composition from the merged image, and voila! You really can't detect that it's a composite shot.
For some perspective on just how cool and time-saving this is, here's the best I could manage manually merging the same two photos using Color It! 4.5 last year. Elements 6 even did a much nicer job of rendering the sky in the automatically merged panorama.
New In Elements 6 for Macintosh
• Streamlined interface
• Guided editing
• New and enhanced compositing
- Photomerge Group Shot
- Photomerge Faces
- Photomerge Panorama
• Quick Selection Tool
• Color Curves Adjustment
• Batch RAW editing
• Support for RAW formats from newer digital cameras
• Black & White Conversions
• Lens Distortion Correction
• Flexible layouts for scrapbook pages, photo books, greeting cards, CD/DVD labels
• Backgrounds, frames, clip art & effects
• PowerPC G4 or G5 or multicore Intel processor
• Mac OS X v.10.4.8 - 10.5
• 512MB of RAM (1 GB recommended)
• 64MB of video RAM
• 1 GB of available hard-disk space (additional free space required during installation)
• 1,024x768 minimum display resolution with 16-bit video card
• DVD-ROM drive
• QuickTime 7 software required for multimedia features
• Internet connection required for internet-based services
System requirements:
Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 for Macintosh runs on Leopard, (Mac OS X v 10.5.2), as well as previous versions of Mac OS X starting with 10.4.8.
System support:
The software is a Universal Binary application that will run natively on PowerPC and new Intel-based Macintosh systems.
Estimated street price is US$89.99 ($69.99 upgrade), which I consider one of the biggest bargains in the commercial software market, considering that PSE continues to pack in most of the power and features of the professional standard Photoshop CS that I would ever use a small fraction of the full-featured Photoshop's price.
Photoshop Elements 6 is immediately available in the United States and Canada for an estimated street price of US$89.99. Owners of previous versions of Photoshop Elements can upgrade to Photoshop Elements 6 for US$69.99 with an in-box, mail-in rebate or through:
http://www.adobe.com
The software is available at Amazon.com, or from one of the following retailers: Apple Stores, Apple.com, Best Buy Stores, BestBuy.com, Costco.com, J&R, Microcenter, NewEgg.com, Staples Stores and Staples.com. Information about other language versions, as well as pricing, upgrade and support policies for other countries is available on:
http://www.adobe.com/go/photoshopelmac
For more information, visit:
http://www.adobe.com
Charles W. Moore
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