Photoshop Elements 8 is Adobe’s latest version of Elements and it’s out now, but does version 8 boast enough innovations to warrant you upgrading from an older copy? Photoshop Elements 8 was developed to supersede Elements 7, but with only nine months having passed since the latter won a Digital Photo Gold Award, this new version has its work cut out if it’s going to make a worthy purchase for newcomers to photo editing and those looking for an upgrade.
All-new featuresElements 7 offered a number of new toys; like the Action Player and Scene Cleaner, and Adobe has added two extra guided edit modes in Photoshop Elements 8. The all-new Photomerge Exposure feature allows you to blend up to 10 shots of the same scene together to create images with a high dynamic range look. You can set it to Auto or you can paint in areas of darkness or brightness using the Selection tool. Photomerge Exposure’s new Transparency slider helps you fine-tune how much of an image you want to blend into the final photo and it worked superbly on our set of four differently-exposed shots.
The other new option is the Recompose tool. It allows you to resize or change the orientation of a photo to fit a certain frame. You can alternatively paint into an image using the Protect or Remove brushes. This extra flexibility is handy for when you want to remove an area before recomposing a shot, but it all depends on the type of shots you take as to how much use it gets.
The latest features added to the Quick Edit mode are Adjustment Previews. These show views of how adjustments like Saturation and Temperature might affect the image before you commit to using them. Clicking on one of the nine small previews temporarily applies the effect to the image in the main window and, on the whole, they make quick fix adjustments much more satisfying to use.
Adobe has also spent time refining the Organizer. The latest Auto-Analyzer sifts through images in the catalogue, splitting them into three categories – High, Medium and Low quality. It ingeniously works out which images are too bright or blurred before placing them in folders under the Smart tags.
The other feature to be added to the Organizer is People Recognition. This automatically identifies faces in your shots as they’re uploaded, cutting the time it takes to find family and friends from your archive of shots and leaves you with a list of people that you’ve photographed under the keyword tags.
Elsewhere you’ll find a new full-screen mode in the Organizer, which allows you to add Quick Edit adjustments at the same time, and there’s updated artwork, themes and templates under the Create tab. There are no additions to the Camera Raw interface though and Camera Raw v5.4 comes as standard.
Interface & Performance Photoshop Elements 8 shares a very similar interface to that of Elements 7. It has retained the dark grey background found on previous versions but, if you prefer, there’s a lighter grey available inside the Preferences. Rather than having the three edit modes – Full, Quick and Guided Edit – underneath the Edit tab as in Elements 7, they’re now on a drop-down list, which has helped free-up editing space on screen.
Loading Photoshop Elements 8 onto our PC was hassle-free and we were up and running within 10mins. All images loaded quickly in both the Edit and Organizer areas; our 200MB test image took 10secs to appear and the 20 high-res JPEGs that we imported into the Organizer took 24secs to copy across. Overall, the speed of use was rapid, so a sluggish performance will never interrupt you.
WHAT’S NEW IN PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS 8
Quick Fix Adjustment PreviewsShows you nine different previews of how different adjustment values affect the image. Clicking a thumbnail shows an enlarged view in the main window, and to apply the preview, all you have to do is click on the tick at the top.
Recompose Photo Helps you change the size and orientation of your images. Simply drag the control handles or alternatively paint with the Protect or Remove brushes to show or hide different areas of the image. Controls for this feature are found in the Options bar.
Photomerge ExposureFound within the Guided Edit mode, Photomerge Exposure lets you blend different exposures of the same scene together. This gives a High Dynamic Range effect and you’re given extra control to paint in the areas of brightness or darkness using the Selection tool in its Manual mode.
Auto-Analyzer This automatically runs as images are imported into the Organizer. It sorts your pics into three main categories – High, Medium and Low quality. As well as carrying out a general assessment of your pics, it tags images on more specific grounds, such as contrast, lighting & shake.
People RecognitionLets you tag people’s faces in your images. It automatically works out who’s who on shots and if it’s unsure it’ll prompt you to type their name.
Full-Screen Organizer ViewView your images at full screen from the Organizer by hitting F11. You can add Quick Edit adjustments from the left side of the screen and view the names of the people in your shot.
Artwork TemplatesA range of new design templates has been added to the collection of frames, themes & backgrounds under the Create tab.
AT A GLANCEFull Price: £ 75.81
Upgrade Price: £63.52 (from any version of Elements)
Minimum Recommended Spec (Windows) Operating System: XP with SP2 or SP3, Vista or Windows 7
Processor: 1.6GHz or faster
Memory: 1GB of RAM
Hard Disk: 2GB available space
Web features: Microsoft IE 6 – 8/
Mozilla Firefox 1.5 – 3.x
Minimum Recommended Spec (Mac)Operating System: Mac OS X v10.4.11-10.5.7 or v10.6
Memory: 1GB of RAM
Processor: Multi–core Intel processor
Hard Disk: 1GB available Multimedia: QuickTime 7
Verdict Most of the new features in Photoshop Elements 8 are found in the Guided and Quick Edit modes, as well as in the Organizer. This is welcome news for novices who like to apply common imaging tasks quickly and those who like to tag and archive their shots. The new thumbnail previews in the Quick Fix mode are an excellent idea and save you pushing sliders back and forth to see how adjustments affect an image.
Elements has been crying out for an HDR feature for a while and the new Photomerge Exposure option is a welcome addition. It’s going to be popular with users who want to combine images with different exposures and it’s excellent to use in Manual mode, where you’re given all the control you need.
The latest developments in the Organizer make it easier to find the shots you want. The Auto-Analyzer did a good job of sorting images into the High, Medium and Low quality settings, and the People Recognition worked fairly smoothly. Only occasionally did it struggle to work out who was who in an image, when the person wasn’t directly facing the camera.
If you’re an Elements 6 or 7 user there’s not really enough here to warrant the £64 upgrade cost. It’s fair to say there’s been a good deal of polish applied, but we’d be more tempted to put the money towards a full version of Photoshop.
If you’re running a much earlier version of Elements, however (like 3, 4 or 5) and don’t fancy paying £500 for Photoshop CS4, Photoshop Elements 8 is well worth the cash.
Elements will always be the more condensed version of Photoshop, but it gets better with every new release, offering more tools to make editing and organizing easier. And all this comes in at just £76. Great value!
Digital Photo Gold AwardCheck out our favourite new features of Photoshop Elements 8 in our online video www.photoanswers.co.uk/Video-Tutorials