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Charles Moore Reviews Photoshop Elements 6.0
•Hot Topics •Reviews •Graphics/Design •Comments •Tell-a-Friend
For editing and correcting digital photographs over the years, I've found Photoshop Elements 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 to be without parallel (discounting Photoshop CS itself) It's a digital virtual darkroom on my Mac without the mess, chemical fumes, and hassle of working in the dark. The fact that it sells for under 100 bucks is amazing given the power of this program. If you're at all serious about digital photography, you need this application.
A fair few Mac advocates have been a bit shirty about the fact that Adobe chose to bypass the Mac with the version 5 release of Photoshop Elements, leaving Mac-users with Elements 4.0, which was not MacIntel native, for more than two years before the release of Photoshop Elements 6 in March of this year. Being still a Power PC user, I didn't feel at all hard done by personally - Elements 4 is a great program with a lot of G4/G5 friendly Altivec optimization, but Adobe might well have been quicker out of the blocks then they were, with nearly 27 months of the MacIntel era elapsing before there was an Intel-native Elements.
However, it's finally arrived with Version 6, which brings the Mac version to feature parity equivalence with the current Windows version. Given the modest price of this application, upgrading should be a no-brainer for users of Intel Macs. For us Power PC laggards, it's more of an equivocal matter. I'm finding the Elements 6 offers reasonable, although not terribly lively, performance on my aging 1.33 GHz PowerBook G4 with 1.5 GB of RAM and 64 MB of VRAM. However version 4 is definitely a lot snappier performing some tasks on the G4, so Power PC holdouts will have to weigh the richer feature set of version 6 against the better speed of version 4.
Elements 6 requires at minimum a G4/G5 or Intel Mac with at least 512MB of RAM (personally, I'm finding that 1.5 GB is no more than enough) and at least 64MB of VRAM, so a fair few lower-end G4 machines don't make the cut. You also need OS X 10.4.8 or later, and a DVD drive is required for installing the program, which ships on DVD media.
Speaking of which, Elements has what has to be one of the most complex, time-consuming and tedious install processes among modern OS X applications, unlike the more common motif these days of simply dragging and dropping an application file from the mounted CD/DVD or disk image to the Applications Folder. It also uses an Adobe proprietary installer program rather than the familiar Apple Cocoa installer. The install and registration process took an hour or so on my 1.33 GHz G4 PowerBook and poky dialup internet connection. I can't tell you exactly how long because after 45 minutes, and with still plenty of distance to cover in the installer's twin progress bars, I got bored and went for a hike, leaving the Mac to fend for itself.
I expect it wouldn't take nearly that long on a MacIntel machine, registering over a broadband connection. The happy news is that everything went smoothly with no hassles or glitches, and Photoshop Elements 6 eventually opened in its new interface glory.
The opening splash screen is attractive, and in the program UI itself it appears that the Pixelmator folks have started a trend with their dark (in Pixelmator's case, translucent black) interface windows and backgrounds motif. PSE6 goes with more of a charcoal gray, which I find less aesthetically arresting than Pixelmator's Darth Vader jet-black, but the more conservative approach Adobe has taken is arguably more functionally practical, and I found PSE's tools easier to distinguish from their palette backgrounds than the tools in Pixelmator.
Happily, may favorite features from Photoshop Elements 4 are carried over and most of them still where I expected to find them, although with some elements it was a bit like coming home and finding that someone has rearranged the furniture, but only come of the furniture.
One PSE 6 interface "feature" I'm not enchanted with is that the program opens by default in "maximized" view with the Desktop obscured behind a background wall of charcoal gray, whether any image documents are open or not. This screenshot from a Spaces thumbnail illustrates what I mean.
There is a setting in the Preferences with which you can disable the wall and partly get your Desktop back, although the space-eating palette bin opens every time you start the program. If I find this annoying on a 17" PowerBook display, it must be even more so on smaller displays.
Photoshop Elements 6 also has some completely new features based on Adobe's proprietary Photomerge technology that let users combine the best facial expressions and body language from a series of shots to create a single, perfect group shot. A new Quick Selection Tool reduces a once time-consuming select-and-adjust task to a single click, and you can now combine horizontal or vertical panoramas using Photomerge Panorama technology to automatically stitch together multiple photos. More on all that below as well.
To get the most from the program, it will be necessary to invest some time sussing out editing techniques and hidden features. I've been working with Elements 6 now for going on half a year (including pre-release preview builds), and I'm still discovering new features and capabilities.
To help with that, Elements now features three distinct modes and levels of operation, dubbed Full, Quick, and Guided, which let you proceed based on your level of experience with bitmap graphics programs and work your way up to higher proficiency.
In Full Edit mode, you have access the program's complete compliment of tools, menus, filters, and effects, while Quick Edit mode is pretty much carried over from version 4, with a main tool palette containing just the essential tools, and another palette on the right displaying slider controls for tasks like general fixes, lighting, color, and sharpness adjustment.
The new to PSE 6 Guided Edit mode will be a welcome addition for users new to photo editing, walking you through the program's various processes step-by-step. as well as providing split-screen previews of how your image will look before and after applying any adjustments.
If you're at all serious about getting first rate results from your digital photography, once you get used to using Elements you'll wonder how you ever got along without it. It is just plain cool being able to brighten the lighting in muddy and murky underexposed shots or conversely richen the color in washed-out, overexposed ones. Adjusting lighting values is usually job one when I'm editing photos, but there is so much more than that to this program
Take for example the erstwhile "Sharpen" filter, which does what you would expect from its name. It is, incidentally, one of the items of "furniture" that's been moved in version 6, from where it formerly resided in the Filter menu, but now shifted to the Enhance Menu's - "Auto Sharpen" and the Unsharp Mask window in which you can adjust three image sharpening parameters, Amount, Radius, and Threshold using respective sliders with real-time feedback in a preview window.
Amount Determines how much to increase the contrast of pixels. For high-resolution printed images.
Radius Specifies the number of pixels to sharpen around edges. For high-resolution images, a radius between 1 and 2 is usually recommended. A lower value sharpens only the edge pixels, whereas a higher value sharpens a wider band of pixels.
Threshold Determines how far different pixels must be from the surrounding area before they are considered edge pixels and sharpened. To avoid introducing noise (in images with flesh tones, for example), experiment with Threshold values between 2 and 20. The default Threshold value (0) sharpens all pixels in the image.
This is all pretty cool, and an improvement on the old Sharpen filter once you figure out where it is.
A new addition to PSE 6 is the Quick Selection tool, with which you're able to just start painting on an image and a selection of similarly colored pixel will be created based on the pixels in the area of the virtual brush. In some instances you will be able to select an entire object with a simple mouse-click. Once an object,or area, is selected, you can adjust the selection with the Refine Edges slider.
Other photo correction and retouching tool favorites of mine include the Healing and Spot Healing brushes, the Rubber Stamp and the Clone tool and the blessed Red Eye Removal tool.
Another new feature in PSE 6 is the Color Curves control, which augments the returning color cast and skin tone correction tools. From time to time, you will have photos that need several adjustments in order to bring out the true color or contrast that you desire. Professional photographers use a "Curve" from Photoshop to guide them with their adjustments. Photoshop Elements now supports curve adjustments.
With the Adjust Color Curves command, you can adjust Highlights, Midtone Brightness, Midtone Contrast, and Shadows using sliders that make the color curve to change, with the changes applied in the preview in real time.
Here's an example of what PSE 6's color cast removal tool can do.
Other enhancements include an improved conversion tool that converts color images into nuanced black-and-whites. Most bitmap graphics applications can convert colored or grayscale images to black & white, but none in my experience does it slicker than PSE 6's Convert To Black And White command, which makes the conversion process quick, easy and even fun by letting you choose a specific conversion result, unlike the Remove Color command, which automatically converts to black and white for you.
In the Convert To Black And White dialog box, you compare and choose different conversion presets represented by image styles. Select a style and then use the available sliders to fine-tune the conversion with adjustments reading out in real time.
More new power in Photoshop Elements 6 For Mac is the enhanced Photomerge Panorama feature based on Adobe's proprietary Photomerge which allows you to stitch together multiple separate contiguous shots into horizontal or vertical seamless panoramas.
Elements 6's the Photomerge Panorama has been enhanced, 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.
Even shots taken with the most expensive DSLR cameras can be subject distortion caused by the curvature of the camera lens or the angle of your position when you took the photo, both of which can make an image of what should be a straight line appear to bend. Photoshop Elements 6 brings all distortion correction adjustments into a single, dedicated place, found in the Filter > Correct Camera Distortion menu. If your photo also has darkened corners attributable to lens curvature (common with wide-angle lenses), PSE 6's Vignette controls can help you gradually lighten or darken corners until they match the lighting across the remainder of the shot.
One of Photoshop Elements 6's marquee new features is The Bridge, a standalone program for organizing and browsing through stored photos, which lets you find your photos, view them as thumbnails or previews, and open them without leaving Elements
The new Bridge CS3 helper application (previously only available with Adobe Creative Suite applications) lets you browse through your hard drive to locate the photos you want to open and manipulate. It also lets you export photos from iPhoto.
The Bridge has several panels that help you find and preview your photos, review associated metadata, and so forth. You can use any of the pre-defined arrangements of these panels - called Workspaces - by clicking the numbered Workspace buttons in the lower right hand corner of Bridge, or create your own custom Workspace by hiding the panels you don't use.
Another Bridge feature, called "Stacks," lets you dispense with iPhoto and organize your photos into stacks of images. Stacks let you keep each series of photos in a single spot in Adobe Bridge for Photoshop Elements, making it easier and faster to find the
photos you want, since stacks reduce unwanted clutter.
Bridge Keywords are words that help you categorize and find photos in ever-growing photo libraries. You can use the Keywords panel, located on the right side of Bridge (in the default Workspace layout), to easily add keywords that represent favorite people, places, or events, and assign them to photos. You can instantly view every photo taken of a person, place, or event by simply filtering on one or more keywords.
You can also employ a feature called Collections, which lets you save groups of favorite photos as as a Collection for quick access and viewing, o to gather together photos you want to use in a project. An example of how you might use Collections would be if you have several cameras, you can segregate your library based on the camera you used to capture your shots.
However, you don't have to use, or even start up the Bridge in order to use Elements 6, and if you prefer to store and organize your images in iPhoto or even in a Finder folder, you can continue to do so.
The ability to take camera "raw" formatted photos ( a rough analogy is "digital negatives") is becoming popular, as even a fair few consumer digital still cameras now support raw. Photoshop Elements 6 extends support for newer raw formats and supports more cameras than ever before while offering more controls like Vibrance and Clarity to give you a wider range of fine-tuned adjustments. PSE 6 also makes it easier than ever to apply conversions to multiple photos at once. Just open them all, select multiple images in the new filmstrip, and make your adjustments.
Create A Slide Show
Photoshop Elements lets you create great looking PDF slide shows that can be shared via e-mail, and you can also use Elements 6 to create a Web photo gallery.
Notwithstanding a few criticisms, I'm a big fan of Photoshop Elements. I don't love the un-Mac like and in many ways clunky user interface or the sometimes gratuitous-seeming complexity and counter-intuitiveness. Adobe's engineers could profitably study more about Pixelmator in the interface department than its color theme. However, I love the power and versatility of this program, and if there's another graphics program that comes even close to offering as much raw image-editing power and versatility for 90 bucks, I can't imagine what it would be.
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
System requirements:
Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 for Macintosh will run on Leopard, (Mac OS X v 10.5), as well as previous versions of Mac OS X starting with 10.4.8
• 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 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
•Hot Topics •Reviews •Graphics/Design •Comments •Tell-a-Friend
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