Adobe Photoshop Elements 6

Adobe Photoshop Elements has enjoyed the position of top dog in the non-professional image-editing world for as long as most people have been taking digital cameras on holiday. But Elements isn’t just for holiday snaps, as well as serious amateur photographers, the program has also found favour with many professional photographers for whom full-blown Photoshop CS3 is overkill. In this latest version Adobe has attempted to continue to appeal to all comers by revamping the interface and including more guidance for digital editing tasks, while at the same time harnessing Photoshop’s raw power to provide tools and features that will appeal to more ambitious photographers.

The first thing that will strike anyone familiar with previous versions is how different Elements 6 looks. Adobe has overhauled the interface and along with the new charcoal colour scheme it exudes a more serious, professional and complicated feel. As before, there are essentially two applications – a photo organiser and an editing tool. The new organiser now has four tabs labelled Organize, Fix, Create and Share. Some of the one-click fixes available from the Fix tab in the Organiser do just that. Auto Smart fix, for example, runs a script that appears to apply levels and colour adjustments. If these fixes aren’t doing the job you can enter the editing application in one of three working modes – Quick Fix, Full Edit, or Guided Edit, above which sit three more tabs that allow switching from editing to creating or sharing. All these tabbed modes doubtless make everything appear well-organised, but we think new users could well be confused and maybe even a little intimidated by the plethora of tabbed panels.

Quick Fix isn’t new, but it does accommodate a one-stop boutique for abounding of the image-enhancing accoutrement you’re acceptable to need. These accommodate Smart Fix, Red-eye Fix, lighting and colour adjustments, and sharpening. As able-bodied as accepting sliders for anniversary of these, there are auto buttons that will do the guess-work for you and, at the actual least, action a alpha point for your own tweaking. The new guided alteration approach takes you through basal alteration tasks such as agriculture and straightening, acclimation bark tones, retouching and appliance the new Photomerge features. Too generally though, the advice consists of little added than a single-sentence account of a slider’s function. For example, Enhance Colour is a hue, assimilation and animation ascendancy with an auto advantage and explanations that hue changes the colours in the photo, assimilation changes the acuteness of the colour or hue and animation changes the accuracy of the colours all of which becomes adequately axiomatic back you move the sliders.

Adobe rarely fails to accord a new absolution with at atomic one abundant new affection and Elements 6 is no exception. Photomerge Accumulation Attempt combines several accumulation photos to aftermath the absolute attempt – no-one with their eyes shut or attractive at their feet. Similar aggregate technology is active in addition new feature, Photomerge Faces. This seamlessly blends appearance from two or added portraits. Adobe has additionally bigger the already accomplished Photomerge panorama feature, added a new Quick Selection apparatus and bigger affiliation with the Premiere Elements video-editing application. All abundant new additions, but we were larboard apprehensive if, in aggravating to amuse everyone, Photoshop Elements’ acceptability for automatic affluence of use isn’t actuality submerged.