PhotoShop Elements is Adobe Systems' stripped-down version of PhotoShop, the unassailable leader in professional graphics manipulation. It has been designed to compete with Jasc's Paint Shop Pro, a $150 product that until now has been the only real alternative to the more expensive PhotoShop (which sells for about $1,100).
Adobe PhotoShop Elements is not to be confused with two entry-level programs, PhotoShop LE (designed to be bundled with products like cameras and scanners, really a teaser program to get users to upgrade) or with Adobe PhotoDeluxe (which despite its name is photo editing for dummies, using templates and super-explicit instructions).
PhotoShop Elements also sells for about $150, but it doesn't feel much different from its older brother. That seems intentional: Adobe would obviously like its customers to develop brand loyalty with Elements so they will find it easier to upgrade to the more expensive PhotoShop in the future.
There are several key differences between the full PhotoShop and its Elements cousin, though. For example, the presentation of Elements is a little simpler, though far from simple-minded. In fact, it should stand as a model for what its more established big brother should be. A nice series of folder tabs across the top offers easy browsing of filters, colour swatches, and image information, as well as one very welcome addition that must find its way into PhotoShop itself: a picture browser which makes selecting a photo from a file directory easy.
Tool palettes offer hints when a menu selection is made, and "recipes" offer directions for accomplishing certain tasks.
These helpful features offer advice without "talking down" to the user, and that alone is remarkable.
Elements lacks slicing and rollover features, necessary in making some kinds of animated images for the Web; it cannot separate pictures into CMYK format, which is necessary to prepare pictures for professional presses; it lacks a channel editor, which is a difficult and little-understood method of editing colour for amateurs, and it lacks the mechanisms needed for professional work flow.
These tools are powerful, but Adobe has wisely realized few people deal with professional publishers.
Adobe Elements has also made some of PhotoShop's tasks more comprehensible. The various filter and file browsers all offer convenient previews of what to expect, a feature seasoned PhotoShop users would surely also like to have; an automated process straightens and crops scanned pictures; features called "backlight" and "fill flash," borrowed from photography, are used to describe the adjustments of overexposed and underexposed pictures, and a process called Photomerge helps immensely in merging and blending photos into a panorama, a technique requiring a tutorial in PhotoShop. A Red-Eye Brush Tool makes the process of removing red-eye easy.
And, in a critical addition for Web producers, Elements has integrated the program called Image Ready, which cuts down the size of an image file so that it becomes small enough to post on the Web or e-mail to a friend.
Ultimately, PhotoShop Elements compares very favourably to Jasc's Paint Shop Pro, and is, finally, a worthy competitor to that venerable product.
Adobe PhotoShop Elements from Adobe Systems sells for about $150.