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Mac jocks miffed at Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) for releasing Windows versions of its Photoshop Elements photo editing and organizing application before getting around to its OS X editions of the software should be pleased with the simultaneous release of the product's new version for both operating systems this month. Better yet, the Mac installment contains some excellent additions and improvements bound to juice the creativity of its advanced amateur audience.
With this issue of Elements, Adobe is aiming to make the program easier to use than ever for its target audience -- the advanced hobbyist. "We try bringing to life some intelligent editing that makes the task of being very creative and doing some cool things with your photos fairly easy," Adobe Group Product Manager Bob Gager told MacNewsWorld.
"It's not a creative professional who's using a tool day in, day out," he explained. "It's someone who enjoys working with their photos, they enjoy the extra power that Photoshop Elements brings them, but they don't want a highly complex user interface that they have to learn every time they get into the program."
Better Organization With Bridge
Adobe is also making it easier to organize a photo collection with Elements by including its powerful Bridge software with the editing program. It allows photo enthusiasts to more easily organize, view and find images stored on their computers. They can eyeball snapshots in a workspace that can be customized and expand thumbnails into a full-screen preview with a single mouse click. Photos can be organized through the use of "tags" and an assortment of search options help lens-slingers find exactly what they're looking for.
In addition, it allows a shutterbug to view RAW files from most camera makers as thumbnails. Being able to view the gamut of RAW formats in a single viewer creates a seamless experience for Elements users.
Better yet, the application includes Adobe's latest RAW editor, Camera RAW 5.5. Tools included with digital cameras for editing RAW files are usually limited to the manufacturer's RAW format. With Elements, a shooter need not worry about what RAW format is being edited.
Improved Exposures With Photomerge
Elements allows a shutter-smith to combine multiple pictures of a scene with a new feature called "Photomerge Exposure." With it, the dynamic range in a photo can be altered to brighten dark areas or darken light areas in the image. So, for example, if you took a night shot with a flash of a person in the foreground and a cityscape in the background, the cityscape would be underexposed. The same shot, without a flash, could be taken to properly expose the cityscape, but the person would end up underexposed. Through Elements' merge feature, the photos can be combined for an evenly exposed composition.
Although Photomerge uses some of the same algorithms as the High Dynamic Range feature in Photoshop, it's attuned to the prosumer. A Photoshop user is more inclined to use HDR to push the reality in a photo, Gager observed, while an Elements user is more interested in preserving rality. "We wanted to help them make a final image that really looks natural, really looks 'as I remember it,'" he said.
Scene Cleaning and Seam Carving
In addition to Photomerge, other new features in this rendition of Elements include the following:
- Scene Cleaner, which allows unwanted objects to be erased from multiple images with a mouse;
- Recompose, based on seam carving technology, which permits resizing of images to proportions outside their natural aspect ratio, so a horizontal shot could be turned into a vertical, or vice versa, without cropping; and
- Smart Brush, which lets an editor touch up areas of a photo -- improving contrast, brightness, color saturation and such -- without having to alter the settings for the entire image.
Good Mac Citizens
With the release of Elements 8, Adobe hopes to salve feelings in the Mac community that OS X devotees have been treated as second-class citizens by the company. "A lot of that came from the fact that we were on different development cycles," Gager acknowledged. For example, when Elements 6 for Windows was released in September 2007, Mac version 6 wasn't released until March 2008.
"We've really tried to put that to rest by getting both versions on the same development cycle," he continued. "All the features in the Photoshop Elements editor are the same on Windows as they are on the Mac."
Adobe's efforts appear to bearing fruit. "I have a trial version running in my MacBook and will definitely buy it after a trial period expires," Elements 8 user Antero Ahvenainen, a vice president at Poyry Industry Oy, an energy consulting and engineering company headquartered in Vantaa, Finland, told MacNewsWorld.
"Elements 8 is indeed quite much improved compared to Elements 7," he added. "Based on a couple of weeks user experience, I can fully recommend Elements 8 for Mac users."
Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 for the Mac sells for US$99, but for a limited time, the company is offering a $20 rebate on that price. There's no upgrade pricing for users of previous versions of the program.
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