Sarasota PC Monitor
Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0
A Software Review
by Sharon Rump
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.I have been using some version of imaging editing programs for many years and have found that Adobe is one of the top makers of programs that work with digital images. There are many versions available in a variety of packages. I had used the full version of Photoshop for quite a while, but with the release of the "Elements" version was quickly drawn to the ease of use and more modest price. I have been using Elements 3 for a good while and thought it would be interesting to compare features of the two to check out the improvements/additional features that Adobe has added to their new software package.
I have Elements 3 installed on my desktop computer and Elements 4 installed on my laptop so that I can easily compare features. I was surprised at the similarities of their Welcome Screen but felt that this would make me more comfortable to know where the features that I was used to using were located. It can be very frustrating to upgrade to a new version of software and find that everything is in a different place and have to start the learning curve from scratch. Not true with this upgrade.
As with Elements 3, the Organizer module of Elements 4 offers a way to manage the image files that are on your system. You must first allow the program to create thumbnail images of the images on your system. You can choose to view the images with a timeline showing on the top of the window or use a calendar view which will allow you to go to a particular date and see the images that were taken then. A new feature in Elements 4 is called face tagging. This allows the program to scan all of the thumbnails that you have created and pick out faces which makes identifying who is in an image much easier. But, you need to have patience as this can be a very time consuming project. After the faces are created you are prompted to attach tags to each of
One of the things that I was most impressed with in the Organizer was the automatic red eye fix. When images were downloaded to my computer I was given an option to use this feature and it worked so fantastic that I doubt I will ever have an image on my system with that dreaded red dye. In earlier versions of Elements there were tools to fix red eyes but I thought they were very involved and I wasn't as happy with the end result. Now it is one of my favorite features! The original is saved and stacked in a "version set" with the improved image on top.
There are many options to email photos directly from within the Elements Organizer adding frames and/or stationery to jazz things up a bit. You can also share photos online and order prints, both features that I would not probably use from within this program.
There is a module that will allow you to create many fun and creative projects with your images. The slide show option has many new features and will allow you to pan and zoom slides, insert some cute graphics, add a variety of transitions and audio and output to a wmv or pdf file, burn show to a CD that can be played on your computer or a DVD player, send as an email slide show or send to a TV if you have Windows XP Media Center Edition.
You can create a VCD which will allow you to burn multiple slide shows on a CD and watch them using DVD players with that option. You can create album pages which is great for scrapbooking. You can also create pages and order them in a professionally bound book from an online source.
You can create greeting cards using your photos, photo post cards, calendar pages and an html photo gallery. As you can see, there are so many creative options available, you can do just about everything you can think of with an image from within this program and I believe there would have to be a few extra days added to the week for me to do all of the above. As far as being creative, this is about the only program you would need to do an excellent job in many directions with a single starting place. When I think of Photoshop, my first idea is photo editing and I haven't even begun to discuss that module of this program. As in most photo editing programs, there are many automatic fixes available and that is a very strong feature of Elements 4 with the Quick Fix option. But, I mostly want to do things on my own and unless I am in a big hurry, I always opt for the Standard Edit mode.
One new tool is the Magic Selection Brush which allows you to choose a brush size and color and simply scribble over the image you want to select and it will automatically calculate the edges and make a selection for you which is pretty accurate. You can add to or subtract from the selection any part that you might want to refine.
Magic must be the key word in Photoshop Elements 4 as the Magic Extractor tool is new and does a fantastic job of selecting a portion of an image and allowing you to extract it from the original location and place it in another area of the original file or on a different photo. Just think, you could take a picture of you in your front yard and magically have you standing in front of the Eiffel Tower in France on a picture you downloaded from the Internet. Of course, you won't really enjoy all of the scenery in the surrounding area but others won't know that. They will just be impressed that you had a better summer vacation than they did.
Another new feature is the ability to adjust skin tones and get a more realistic natural look. I know that sometimes I can look at an image and know that something needs to be tweaked but am not sure where I should start. Sometimes it is nice to have automatic features like this available so there is a starting point to let you see how something could look if you made a slight change. Although more is changed than just the skin tones in the image, it is a subtle change and you can decide if it is something you like or you can choose to make more manual adjustments.
The toolbox has changed a bit with the addition of the two new tools mentioned above and the pencil tool has been included with the brushes. There is a button for the Straighten tool which I really like since I would keep forgetting where it was located and now it is on its own in the toolbox.
The features of the full version of Photoshop that a lot of the professionals use are numerous and can be very complicated. In Elements, Adobe has chosen many that will help even the beginner to take an image and tweak it to get just the effects that you are wanting. You can adjust lighting, levels of shadows and highlights, convert to many different types of images. There are many tools that even a beginner should be able to use with ease and lots of help available through the "How To" window as well as the excellent Adobe Help section.
There is a wealth of standard editing tools for practical use such as selections, resizing, cropping, straightening images or using features such as cloning or healing as well as fun things like the cookie cutter or custom shapes that can be added. If I were allowed only one program on my computer for working with images, I am sure this would be my first choice! Adobe is also one of the few software developers who includes a good manual with most of its software. The street price of this bargain package is $99 but you can find it at a lesser cost on the Internet or at discount stores.
System requirements:
* Intel Pentium III or 4 or Intel Centrino (or compatible) 800MHz processor
* Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Home Edition or Media Center Edition 2005 with Service Pack 2
* 256MB of RAM (512 recommended)
* 900 MB of available hard-disk space
* Color monitor with 16-bit color video card
* 1,024x768 monitor resolution
* Microsoft DirectX 9 compatible display driver
* CD-ROM drive :
Copyright 2006. This article is from the September 2006 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/
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