Photoshop Elements 5.0
Adobe has long been considered the leader in many aspects of digital imagery. Photoshop is unprecedented in the industry and remains the top pick for most photographers and graphic artists. Photoshop Elements is basically a modified version for the consumer market; added features make photo editing painless.

Photoshop holds the edge over its competitors for its ease–of–use, its powerful feature set and its vast library of support references. Manufacturers straddle a fine line between offering advanced features and keeping software easy to use for non–professionals; Adobe has found the right balance. You may not need all of the features right out of the gate, but they are available for you to grow into as your creativity expands.


Ease of use:
Photoshop Elements takes top honors for its simplicity, beginning to end. On start up, a welcome screen appears that lets you quickly choose what you would like to do—open a file, look for a file, import a picture or view a tutorial. You can turn this welcome screen off if it gets annoying.

The program also offers a “hints” pallet—a little window that displays options for specific features. The hints pallet changes to match each tool you select, giving you detailed help about that tool.

A “recipes” pallet gives you the option to learn the program step–by–step or to receive extra help to accomplish a given task. If you choose “recipes,” a dropdown menu appears listing several common tasks. When you drill down (select more specific options as you open additional windows), you can even click on a link that says “do it for me.” Clicking this will pull down all the appropriate menus to show you where, exactly, and how to do that specific task. You can even download new recipes from Adobe as they become available.

Finding the tools you need couldn’t be easier. Major functions with icons are listed at the top, or you can access them through the menu lists.

Importing:
Among Element 5’s unique features are its outstanding import capabilities. There are several options to choose from including importing a still frame from a video (this is slick) and importing a pdf document. The program also imports pictures from digital cameras and scanners.

Editing:
Photoshop Elements has many robust editing features designed for the home user. Too many to list here. The “Quick Fix” wizard makes fast work of adjusting lighting, focus, color and rotating images. You can adjust these settings manually or use the Auto Color and Auto Levels feature. You can also see all the changes in real–time; this means you can see the actual image as it is adjusted instead of just a thumbnail preview.

The red–eye remover is simple and effective. Just select the red–eye tool and click on the area you want to adjust. New in 5.0 is also an automatic red–eye tool that removes red–eye as it imports the photos. Elements also includes options for adding borders, special effects (filters) and layer effects. Each layer has its own settings, including transparency support—this means you can overlay two or more images to create unique collages.

One unique feature of Elements is the panorama tool. If you have taken several photos of a wide landscape, for example, you can merge them together into a long panorama. The program will automatically eliminate seams and blend the color.

The text tool is versatile. Just type anywhere on the image and the text tool will make a new text layer so that you can add special text effects. You can change the orientation of the text, warp the text creatively and even adjust the transparency. The greatest benefit of the text entry tool—you don’t have to open a clumsy text entry window; you can see what you are typing on the image itself.

The selection tools are among the best we’ve seen. Of course, the program has the standard shape selection and lasso tools. There is also a magic wand tool that will select a section of an image with the same range of colors. Perhaps one of the neatest selection tools we've seen is the paint brush selection tool. You just grab a brush and start painting your selection with dotted lines; this selection tool allows you to be very precise if you zoom in on sections.

The batch capabilities included with Elements is limited compared to its big brother, Photoshop. Batches are processes that you do over and over; in Photoshop you can record then simplify complex batches to one click of a button, saving time. However, in Elements, only three preset batches are available. You can convert a file from one format to another (e.g. psd to jpg), resize the image and resolution, and rename the files.

Sharing:
Adobe Elements includes all the common ways to share your photos—and a few uncommon ways. In addition to automatic email sharing, you can also generate a stand–alone slideshow to send to whomever you wish. It’s created as a pdf and all your recipient needs is a free download of Adobe Reader. The new version 4.0 also lets you create moving slideshows by panning and zooming. You can also make neat web galleries easily and upload your images directly to the web for online sharing and printing. For printing, there are “picture package” templates to automatically print your images in specific sizes, or you can print multiples of one picture on a single sheet. There are also templates for Photo Books, Greeting Cards, and Calendars.

Output Capabilities:
Elements supports eleven of the most common image formats—including PDF—a format few products offer. One of the features that I liked most about Photoshop Elements is the powerful and useful Save for Web tool. You can view the original, play with different compression settings then compare these side–by–side before you commit to save or send. That way, even if you don’t know the technical differences between a Gif or a Jpg file format, you can try different settings and see which will give you the best quality at the smallest size. Every image is different; you can’t expect to get the same results from simply choosing “jpg medium quality” on every image. You can also create animated gifs with this program, but doing so isn’t as easy and doesn’t yield results as robust as those made using the full–blown Photoshop program.

Organizing:
Organizing and searching for photos is quick, informative and easy with Photoshop Elements’ file browser. You can view EXIF (digital camera data) information, determine the size of the thumbnails, change file names, rank pictures for easy searching, rotate images, rename images and a score of other options. The layout of the file browser is the best I’ve seen. You can scale the thumbnails, view the image information and even see a larger thumbnail of the selected image—all easily accessed from the same screen. There’s also a slick timeline bar so you can quickly scan through your photos chronologically. With most other file browsers we’ve reviewed, you must drill down through several windows to get to the same information. One feature added Photoshop Elements 5 is the ability to create albums. This feature was not available in previous versions.

Help/Support:
Photoshop Elements has a vast library of support options. Built into the product are “hints”, tutorials and “recipes.”Online, Adobe offers a FAQ page, a searchable knowledge database, a user forum, an online form (to contact technical support) and known–issues page (detailing quirks that have been discovered since the program’s release). You can also receive phone support—for a fee—if all else fails.

In addition to Adobe support, there are scores of books written about Adobe Photoshop Elements. Check them out here, in our books section.

A complete list of features and side-by-side comparisons are available on the Anti-Spyware Software Review HomePage.