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October 22, 2008
[REVIEW—ADOBE PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS 7]
Price: $129 (upgrade from v6 $99)
Small improvements
The low-down: This is Adobe’s cut-down “domestic” version of Photoshop, selling for several hundred dollars less than the full program but having enough image editing features for most amateur photographers. Not much has changed in the basics since version 6 – editing is still divided into the options of “full” for the serious, “quick”, for those who want automation and “guided” for the in-betweens. Many of the changes are to do with connectivity to image storage and sharing web sites, including Adobe’s own, which apparently is only available to US subscribers. In “full” edit mode there is one interesting new tool, called Smart Brush which is used to make skies bluer, local areas darker or lighter and it whitens teeth as well as adding lipstick!
Like: The most useful addition to version 7 is the inclusion in the Guided edit suite of an Actions player. Actions are automated routines, like macros in Word, that once created will automatically replay a sequence of editing steps. Until version 7 this has only been possible in a limited way, and it is still limited.
Dislike: The beauty of Actions in full Photoshop is that they can be user-created simply by recording the process. In Elements 7 Actions can be replayed but not created. That means that Actions must be sourced somewhere else – either from a friend with the full program or from Adobe’s Exchange (http://tinyurl.com/qbc2a) where Photoshop users share actions and plug-ins, usually free. However, if an action has processes in it that are in full Photoshop but not in PS Elements then it may not work. Presumably Elements 8 will include a recorder.
Verdict: This software is excellent value for money, although the cost of a third party instruction manual should be factored into the price. Corel’s PaintShop Pro Photo X2 is a better featured, more serious editing program, but Photoshop is the universal imaging equivalent of Word. It’s a hard choice.
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Posted by terry at October 22, 2008 11:15 PM
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Comments
"Many of the changes are to do with connectivity to image storage and sharing web sites, including Adobe’s own, which apparently is only available to US subscribers."
I have joined this site. You simply select USA as your country and it lets anybody join.
Unfortunately it's Flash based (no surprises there, guess who owns the Flash technology?) and on Australian Internet connections it's slow and IMO buggy. The layout and user options are fairly restricted and I would rank this is at the bottom end of places to store photos on the web but if you are looking for 2GB of free storage just sign up.
Posted by: RichardR at October 24, 2008 05:36 AM