Photo answers review
Photo answers rating 
Just eight months after the release of version 7, the Elements team are back with a bigger and even more feature-packed edition. Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 is crammed with features but we’re just going to take a look at what’s new. Despite its rather cheesy appearance, there’s no denying the fact it’s founded on Photoshop CS4 – the undisputed champion of the imaging world. It’s much more than a dumbed-down version of Photoshop for beginners too. There’s enough here to cater for all but the most ambitious snapper, with Layers, DVD slideshows, web galleries and HDR at your fingertips. It’s hard to think of what could have been added to Elements to make it any more comprehensive, but here are six of the key new additions.
Quick fix previewThere are three editing modes: Full, Quick, and Guided. Full gives maximum control and is the hardest to use, Guided gives step-by-step help when making common adjustments, and there are now 21 guides. As well as the usual set of sliders for adjusting colour, contrast, sharpness and saturation, in Quick mode you can see a grid icon next to each Quick Fix option. Once clicked, nine variations are revealed each showing different levels of the selected effect. Hover over a thumbnail to see a full-size preview and click the one you like. It’s debatable as to whether it’s any more than dragging a slider.
Recompose toolThis is essentially a repackaged version of the Content Aware Scaling feature first seen in Photoshop CS4. Now added to the toolbox, this operates just like the usual Transform command. Drag the corner handles to squash and scale the image. The key difference here is that the areas of detail do not distort. Instead, the plain areas of the image stretch and shrink allowing the image shape to change without creating noticeable distortion. It doesn’t work well with every image, but if the background is smooth it generally produces acceptable results. It’s now easy to mark out the areas you want to protect by painting with the special tool. You can even paint the parts you want to eliminate when the shot is shrunk. Unfortunately, it’s something that will probably benefit web designers more than photographers, as the results don’t really hold up to close scrutiny.
Auto-AnalyzerThe Auto-Analyzer is part of the Elements Organizer. Its job is to scan the quality and content of images as they are imported, and tag them with its findings. It’ll dish out High, Medium and Low Quality tags, as well as a few others such as High Contrast and Blurred. These different groups can then be identified. It was a bit of a fiddle to get this to work, and when we did it took about an hour to analyse 300 RAWs. The reward was disappointing too. Every image landed the High Quality tag, which although flattering, wasn’t very accurate. We were really hoping it might be able to identify the sharpest shot from a burst of similar shots.
People recognitionAgain part of the Organizer, this is probably the most innovative new feature in Elements 8. After Auto-Analyzing the shots, the People Recognition icon allows you to start tagging peoples’ faces – it’s a bit like Facebook. Faces are automatically identified, so all you have to do is click where it says ‘Who is this?’ and type their name. After a while, Elements starts to recognise the individuals you tag and automatically finds them in the untagged shots too. All you’ve got to do is confirm the tags are correct. It’s not the most intuitive tool to use, but is fairly well implemented. Its biggest flaw is that it won’t detect faces that are on a slight angle. In fact, it missed most of the faces in our test images. To be truly useful, this requires a lot more work, but Adobe is certainly on the right track.
Photomerge exposureAkin to ‘Merge to HDR’ in Photoshop, this feature is designed to combine several different exposures to create a single shot with a wide dynamic range. Put simply, shadow details are brought out and blown highlights are pulled back. To use it, select a few images and choose the Photomerge Exposure from the File>New menu. The automatic results are the best, albeit very flat. Shadows/Highlights could be used to bring some contrast back, but Elements doesn’t really offer enough control here either. There is a Manual mode too, which works in an entirely different way. First you select a well-exposed background and then you mark out the correctly exposed foreground details from a second image. The two are merged automatically. It’s a nice idea, but with our test images we were unimpressed – the cut-outs were terrible. If you thought Photoshop was bad at HDR, then you’re not going to like this.
VerdictYet again Elements has confirmed its position as the best image-editing package for enthusiasts and beginners alike. The scope of options on offer is mind-boggling, and there’s some stuff here we’d like to see in Photoshop and Lightroom too. However, we do have some concerns. With icons and menus filling every inch of the screen, it’s quite heavy on the eye. Ironically, the many helpful features are at risk of making Elements more confusing to use, not easier. Perhaps it’s time for some consolidation in the name of simplicity. As a whole, not everything in Elements feels integrated and polished. Some parts feel tacked-on, breaking the continuity and making it all too easy to lose your way. It’s time for some honesty too. Certain tools and options just don’t do what they promise. Having said all that, we still heartily recommend Elements 8 on value for money if nothing else. Stunning results are possible if you’re willing to sift through to find the features that work for you. One final word of warning though – if you’re used to Photoshop, save your pennies and go for the real deal. The cut-down features and often convoluted workflow in Elements will probably drive you mad.