Adobe Photo Elements 2
There is good news for the millions of new digital camera users Adobe is making rich
photo-editing very approachable. For camera buffs who are looking to do more with
their digital images, Photo Elements 2 is a very attractive alternative. What makes
it more remarkable is that Adobe is doing this while retaining a lot of the power,
flexibility, and functional layout of their top of the line, $500++ Photoshop product.
Sounds like it could be the worst of all possible worlds - the dumbing down of Photoshop
with a bunch of hit or miss consumer conveniences - you know, the redeye filter,
the picture framer, etc.
But Adobe with Photo Deluxe and Photoshop LE(Light Edition) have already had two
kicks at that cat - and with Photo Elements, Adobe is third time charm and right
on the money for ease of use and dare I say it - down right fun features to use.
Wow - did I say that about an Adobe product ?
Actually, the first version of Photo Elements was already doing the right things:
a)downsized from 14 color modes to 4 (RGB, greyscale, indexed for Web and bitmap
for masks) while chopping the number of color correction commands from about 20 to
7;
b)eliminated clipping paths, channels, layer masks, layer folders, rasterize
layers
and other very specialized photoprocessing functions;
Figure 2 A Tale of 2 Toolboxes | c)dropped actions and simplified batch
processing;
d)simplified some of the key menus and commands.
However, after all this simplification Photo Elements retained remarkably well the
core features and capabilities of Photoshop. In Photo Elements 2 extra care was taken
to keep a robust feature set. The usual victims of a simplification purge such as
masks, layers, vector mode drawing, customizable brushes, styles and key color corrections
were not only retained but enhanced. For example, Photoshop users are going to be
jealous of some of the new preview modes and Recipe conveniences in Photo Elements
2. Also compare toolboxes in Figure 2. Most of Photoshop's toolbox (on the left)
carries through to Photo Elements and in the same layout. Ditto for menus, in fact
Photo Elements adds one new major menu, Enhance, which contains all the quick fix
and automated corrections dialogs and wizards. Finally the Layer, Select, Filter,
View, Window and Help menus are substantially the same between the two programs.
Photo Elements 2 - A Photoshop 7 Clone ?
So the secret is out. Photo Elements is a clone of Photoshop. Depending on your
point of view, Photo Elements 2 has close to 75-85% of the functionality of its
big brother,
PhotoShop 7, and retains most of the same layout, tools and features. Is this good
news or bad ? Let me suggest that it is very good news indeed for 4 reasons. First,
by adding a series of wizards in the Enhance menu and generally improving the preview
capability of many commands, Photo Elements has brought simplification and ease
of preview features which have been long awaited for in Photoshop. Second, Photo
Elements
has not just clever wizards, but also tutorials, hints, recipes, and a special
search button that simplify learning and using Photo Elements quite a lot. (Can
you keep
a secret ? - I now use Photo Elements to figure |
out how to do a tough editing task
in Photoshop; but more on this below). Third, Photo Elements has some new features
unique to it that Photoshop users will be begging for. Fourth, Photo Elements fixes
some problems in Photoshop that again make for very attractive features in Photo
Elements.So the bottom line is that Photo Elements might be called the training
clone for Photoshop. For 60-80% of users Photo Elements will be more than good
enough and we think very
comfortable to use for most digital photo enhancement tasks. But Adobe has
done a very clever thing here. Photoshop is notorious for having a large learning
curve. Photo Elements is an excellent set of "training wheels" for
aspiring-to-be Photoshop users. Learn Photo Elements well and you are well on
your way to mastering Photoshop if need be - but at 1/3 the price. So Photo Elements
can be the either a very handy, easy to use Photo editor for the digital image
neophyte or it can be the first step on the way to mastering one of the best
photo-editing programs available, Photoshop.
How To Do Digital Photo Editing Quickly
As a digital photographer averaging about 10-12,000 images a year I have
to do quite a lot of routine photo-enhancing work. The problem is that the
routine is never quite the same so I just can't automate the process - though
surely not for lack of trying. However, there are five to seven tasks that
constantly recur; and so a digital photo processing program should be very
good and efficient at these tasks:
1)rotate and/or crop the image - isolating down to the essential photo element;
2)improve the sharpness or focus of the entire image:
3)apply a color and/or brightness/contrast correction to the entire image;
4)eliminate some visually offending object in an image;
5)apply very specific color corrections(usually different from 3 above) to selected
areas of the image;
6)enhance the focus of some areas while blurring/smoothing out other areas on the
image;
7)add another element to the image, compositing the two images together.Photo Elements
not only lets you do these tasks - but also very quickly. The first three can be
accomplished with one command Enhance | Quick Fix. Think of this as one of Photo
Elements 2 command centers for rapidly fixing up
your images. As Figure 3 below shows, users can go to one place to quickly
make brightness, color correction, focus and rotation corrections. And with commands
to
Undo or Reset Image(clear away all corrective steps), users have
complete control of photo corrections. But Quick fix just mirrors Photo Elements
in general. The Edit | Step backward and File | Revert commands allow the same "undo" flexibility
within Photo Elements in general.
Figure 3 Adobe's Quick Fix dialog in action
The second command center for repairing your photos is the How To panel accessed
a number of ways. Use Window | How To or enter a word like "brightness" in
search query box on the toolbar and a list of recipes and help topics will popup.
Finally, many help topics contain references to recipes. As seen in Figure 1, the
How To Recipes show step by step processes to accomplish a task -in Figure 1 we
are doing some color corrections. Recipes
tells you how to do it and then are prepared to execute the instructions for
you
by just clicking on a link or button. So users have a choice to learn by doing
or speed through the process and let Photo Elements do the task. Either way,
the task gets done and the user knows a lot more about how to do so.
And How To Recipes are not just 1, 2 done but involve 4-7 steps.
How To Recipes are just one of many aids to working within Photo Elements that
make it much easier to learn and re-use. There is the Hints panel and Options
toolbar which are both context sensitive. Hints tells users more about how to
use the current tool they have selected while the Options toolbar displays all
the properties of the selected tool so that the user can conveniently change tool
settings in one place. Finally warning and error messages now have links to some
of their terms - so if you don't understand the message you can get immediate
help. The net result of all these helpful assists is that users get photo-editing
done more quickly while learning the program at a pace conducive to their needs.
This is so well done Photo Element's learning aids will have an impact across
many programs and not just from Adobe.
Goodies for Getting Things Done
Photo Elements is packed with goodies for getting things done. The File Browser borrowed
from Photoshop 7 (by way of PaintShop Pro's fine rival example). But it is improved
in Photo Elements as it is much faster than its sibling version at scanning a directory
for all the images stored in it. A built-in image file browser is so convenient to
work with - double click on a thumbnail image and its immediately made available
for photo editing. Want to rotate or rename or delete or move an image in the File
Browser? - it is easily done. An Image File Browser really helps to organize and
edit your images.
Another feature is exclusively new to Photo Elements is the Video frame grabber.
Just choose File | Import | Frame from Video and then let the dialog box lead you
on. Browse to the video file, Photo Elements then displays the first frame - then
use the forward, fast forward, rewind and fast rewind controls to find the exact
frame you want and click the Frame Grab button and it is in. Use the arrow keys to
move back and forth by single frame and spacebar to grab a frame. The only drawback
- Photo Elements does not support two popular video file formats - Apple Quicktime
.mov and Real Player's .rm.
Want to get output up to the Web - again Photo Elements really can help. Choose File
| Create a Web Photo Gallery. Again there is a master wizard which allows users to
choose the directory (and all subdirectories if so desired)which contains the pictures
to be put in the gallery. Users can also choose from a drop downlist of a dozen styles
ranging from simple to spotlighted to museum styling. Once style is chosen, users
can add further customizations to the banner, thumbnail layout and sizing, plus the
final image layout and sizing.. When everything is set, click okay and Photo Elements
automatically creates the web pages, collects the images together including making
thumbnails and final image sizings, and puts it all in the destination directory
you selected. Use your browser to surf your gallery locally; and use any FTP utility
to transfer them to the Internet.
One could easily go on about the goodies in Photo Elements - many of them brand new,
not available even in the latest Photoshop 7. Take JPG2000 files, our tests show
at the same size as traditional JPG compressed files, JPEG2000 quality is consistently
better. Or consider the new Enhance |Adjust Lighting | Fill Flash command.This one
is fun to use because it allows for quick correction of those pictures where a bright
background has caused drastic under exposure of the main subject. Forgot to use Fill
Flash on your camera? Well now Photo Elements Fill Flash allows you to do so quickly
with fine control for saturation and the amount of fill lighting This one saves lots
of time.
Summary
Some users will insist Photo Elements is full Photoshop with all its filters, brushes,
layer styles and vector shape tools. And Photo Elements does use the very same tools
and commands for about 3/4 of Photoshop features. But Photoshop 7 is at a higher
level. For example, Photo Elements does not have Photoshop's sophisticated web image
slicings and compression optimizations. Photo Elements has some but not the advanced
color correction, masking, and layer control features exclusive to Photoshop 7. But
with the new Image File Browser, Shapes and Styles, and How To Recipes, Photo Elements
gives traditional middle tier photo editors like Corel's Photo Essentials, Jasc PaintShop
Pro and Ulead's Photo Impact a real run for the money - and not just in features;
but also in ease of use plus drag and drop fun features. Photo Elements 2 continues
to make photo-editing approachable and easier than ever to do.
Jacques Surveyer is a mentor on Photo Finishing and takes a few images himself;
see www.picsofdetroit.com
|
