Adobe Photoshop Elements 15

In summary

If this is your first foray into ‘serious’ image editing, Elements 15 is one of the most versatile and easiest to use programs available.

It’s ideal for people who want to ‘work’ with their photos but don’t want the hassle of learning the ins and outs of a complex (and relatively expensive) program like Photoshop. It’s also for photographers who prefer stand-alone software over subscription-based applications.

Serious photographers are likely to find Elements 15 frustrating to use, particularly if they have had any experience with Photoshop.

 

Full review

The last time we reviewed Adobe’s Photoshop Elements was in November 2011, when we looked at Photoshop Elements 10. Five years on, the latest version, Photoshop Elements 15,  adds a raft of new features and tools to help amateur photographers obtain the results they want from their pictures. Continuing in the tradition established in the earliest versions, the new software can be used for organising image files, adjusting colours and tones, creating projects based on users’ photos and outputting the results in various forms.

The Adobe Photoshop Elements 15 packaging. (Source: Adobe.)
 If you are already using one of the previous versions of the software, you’ll be interested in how Elements 15 differs from them. The table below, sourced from Adobe’s website, lists new additions plus common features in the three latest versions of Photoshop Elements to help you to decide.

	Photoshop  Elements 12			Photoshop  Elements 13		Photoshop  Elements 14	Photoshop  Elements 15
Easily find your photos and videos
Find the exact photos you’re looking for by searching on a combination of things, including people, places, events, and other favorite subjects							●
Photoshop Elements suggests Smart Tags for your photos based on subjects like sunsets, birthdays, cats, dogs, and more							●
Find photos by the people in them	●		●			enhanced	●
Find photos and videos on a map based on where you took them	●		●			enhanced	●
Find photos based on what you were doing	●		●			enhanced	●
Find photos based on visual similarity	●		●			●	●
Tag faces in photos using your Facebook Friends list, and organise photos and videos with visual tags	●		●			●	●
Dive right in
Simply tap to do all your organising and quick photo edits on touch devices								●
Get the help you need “” even if you don’t know exactly how to describe it “” right from within Photoshop Elements								●
Quick and easy fixes
Turn frowns into smiles and adjust squinting eyes to make people look their best								●
Edit a batch of photos at one time								enhanced
Remove camera shake “” great for selfies and other handheld shots						●		●
Remove haze for sharp-looking landscape shots						●		●
Choose your favorite composition from four crop options			●			●		●
Easily remove “pet eye” discolorations	●		●			●		●
Instantly unclutter and repair photos, whiten teeth, fix red eye, and more	●		●			●		●
Artistic effects
Easily try out new looks and show your creativity using the simplified Filter Gallery								●
Elements analyzes your photo and gives you five effects that fit perfectly						●		●
See five variations of each effect to get the look you want					●	●		●
Create zoom burst, tilt-shift, vignette, high-key, and low-key effects	●				●	●		●
Turn photos into illustrations, paint on up to 100 effects, and add one-touch Frames, Effects, and Textures	●				●	●		●
Amazing transformations
Use 45 Guided Edits, including new ones for putting photos inside text, giving one photo many effects, and creating frames								●
Easily select detailed edges like hair or fur						●		●
Create photo remixes for all-new scenes and nudge boundaries for easy selections					●	●		●
Easily move objects and have the background fill in	●				●	●		●
Edit raw images, recompose to any size without distortion, and create great group shots and panoramas	●				●	●		●
Creations that reflect your style
Blend your Facebook profile and cover photos, and create slide shows with multiple photos on each slide					●	●		●
Create cards and other keepsakes that you can print at home	●				●	●		●
Share the way that works for you
Share to Facebook and YouTube	●				●	●		enhanced
Share photos on Twitter and video clips on Vimeo	●				●	●		●

In this review we’ll concentrate on the new features introduced in each of these areas.

Who’s it For?
 Photoshop Elements has always been for imaging hobbyists; people who want to ‘work’ with their photos but don’t want the hassle of learning the ins and outs of a complex (and relatively expensive) program like Photoshop. It’s also for photographers who prefer stand-alone software over subscription-based applications.

The latest version, Photoshop Elements 15, has been designed to be easy to use, cover everything a novice users could want or need and come at a price amateur users can afford. As you can see from the table above, it doesn’t provide a lot more than previous versions, although a couple of functions have been ‘enhanced’ to make them easier to use, prettier to look at or offer greater functionality.

Photographers looking for improvements to the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in for converting raw files into editable TYIFF and JPEG formats will probably feel let down. There have been no improvements to the functionality of ACR since Elements 12.

But if you use a touch-screen computer for editing, it could be worth a look, although the touch controls are limited. In addition, editing by touch necessarily means a loss of precision when it comes to selection processes.

How to Get It
 Although boxed editions are available, most people will buy Photoshop Elements 15 directly from Adobe’s website, where it’s available as a free, 30-day trial  download that will cost you AU$99.99 if you want to keep using it after the trial period ends. This is cheaper than buying either a licence card or a disk through a retail outlet.

It’s a 1.8GB download and the installed program takes up roughly 1.9GB on your computer’s disk drive. The software is available for both Windows (v. 7 SP1, 8   and 10) and Mac (OS 10.10, 10.11 and 10.12).

If you want video editing you can save money by acquiring the combined Photoshop Elements 15 / Premiere Elements 15 bundle for AU$149.99. Adobe doesn’t show any upgrade options on its website so we assume they’re no longer available.

Installation and Set-up
 Once you’ve downloaded Photoshop Elements 15 you’ll need to allow about 15 minutes for the program to unpack itself and install on your computer. When this is done, you’ll see the screen below, with different images highlighting new features. Below the picture are three buttons that enable you to choose the Photo Editor, Organiser or Video Editor.
 

 The opening screen provides links to the Photo Editor, Organiser and Video Editor.

You can open each of these workspaces by clicking on the designated button. Clicking on the Video Editor button links you to Premiere Elements 15 and, if you didn’t buy the combined bundle, provides an invitation to install it from a DVD or download a trial version.

Image Organisation
 You either love image organisers or you hate them (we fall into the latter category). Fortunately, you don’t have to use the organiser in Elements 15; you can simply click on the Photo Edit button. For novice users, however, the organiser will provide an easy way to catalogue and locate pictures if you don’t have a system of your own in place.

Fortunately, it doesn’t necessarily take over when you connect a camera or memory card to your computer. You have to select it when you open the program. As before, the organiser is a cut-down version of the Library function in Photoshop Lightroom. It handles image uploading and all aspects of file management.

The first time you use Elements 15, you can use the organiser to import and catalogue files that are already stored on your computer. But be warned, this process can take a while. It took roughly 30 minutes to import 24,000 image files into the organiser when we installed Elements 15.

Above the thumbnails screen on the entry page for the organiser is a bar with eight tabs: Import, eLive, Media, People, Places, Events, Create and Share and the new software makes it easier to catalogue and find pictures by searching across a combination of items, including people, places, events and other selected subjects. All actions can be carried out via one of these tags.
 Clicking on the Import tab lets you import images from files and folders in your computer, from a camera or card reader, from a scanner or in bulk from the Pictures folder, Google Drive or OneDrive cloud storage. (You can select any one of them.)
 

Image importing options accessed by clicking on the Import tag.  

The eLive tab takes you to Adobe’s online resources page, which contains links to tutorials on the various new features in   Elements 15, along with tips and galleries of inspirational and amusing pictures. As well as   ‘Get started’ and ‘quick tour’ links you can also discover how to share pictures to Facebook and YouTube, take correctly focused photos, add visual effects, combine faces with cartoon backgrounds, apply smart looks and produce collages; to name just a few of the links provided.

There’s also a Search bar that lets you locate what you want by offering a drop-down list of options when you start entering text. We counted 64 links in all, covering most of the functions ““ old and new ““ that can be accessed in the new software.
 

 The eLive page.

Clicking on the Media tab takes you to the folders in the organiser and displays thumbnails. A column on the left side of the workspace lists the image folders that have been added to the organiser, while on the right side is a column devoted to  tagging. You can tag by keywords, people, places and events or create your own sets of tags.
 

 The Media page.

The People tab will search for photos of people and display people who appear in several different image files so you can tag them with names and categories (family, friends, etc.) to make them easy to locate in subsequent searches. You’ll be prompted to identify new faces previously not encountered and the program will suggest add photos that could be added to a face tag.
 

 The People page.

The Places tab lets you tag images with location information and link them to a Google map that shows where they were taken. The Events page lets you tag groups of images taken at the same event, making it easier to locate events like birthday parties, holidays, trips, weddings, first days of school, etc.

The main problem with the software is that you have to go through and apply these tags as the image files are uploaded into the organiser catalogue. We found it impossible to get the organiser to accept images from a folder we had already named, even after we had tagged all the images with the place or event name. You can’t access the Help page while tagging or searching folders. Clearly, Adobe has some work to do to make this facility more user friendly.  

Smart Tags.
 The Smart Tags function will scan through your photos and suggest tags based upon common subjects, such as flower, waterfall, sunset, desert, beach, dog, cat, bird, etc. It doesn’t always apply the tag you want but it can save you time tagging batches of image files.

Once you’ve tagged images, the Search function seems to work quite well and you can call up searches based upon one tag or several tags. Fine-tuning a search by combining tags makes it quicker to locate a shot of, say, wattles in flower in the Wollemi National Park in spring or sunset at Lake Eyre.
 

 A search on Lake Eyre plus May 2016 calls up images tagged with the location and date information.

The Create tab opens a dropdown menu that shows the different things you can do with your images. Included in the list are links to functions that let you create photo books, greeting cards, calendars, collages, slideshows and customised jackets and labels for your CDs and DVDs.  

The dropdown menu for the various Create functions.
   The Share tab provides links to the most popular social network sites, including Facebook, email, Flickr, Twitter, SmugMug Gallery, Vimeo and YouTube as well as the option to create a PDF slideshow. To use any of the video options ““ including burning images and movies to CD or DVD ““ you must have Adobe Premiere 15 loaded on your computer.

The Editing Workspace
 The editing workspace in Photoshop Elements 15 hasn’t changed much since the previous version of the software. Along the top of the workspace are seven buttons: Open, eLive, Quick, Guided, Expert, Create and Share. The Open button takes you to the organiser or a folder where you can select an image file, while the eLive, Create and Share buttons have the same functions as in the organiser.

The Quick button opens a basic editor that lets you perform most of the common edits you might require. It provides quick access to the rotate, resize, crop, straighten, move and healing brush tools as well as the Smart Fix, exposure, lighting, colour (hue, saturation and vibrance), balance (colour temperature and tint) and sharpening functions.
 

 The Quick editing workspace.

The  Guided  button accesses the 45 Guided Edits provided in Elements 15, which are split into six subdivisions: Basics, Colour, Black & White, Fun Edits, Special Edits and Photomerge. Each section provides a variety of pre-set adjustments that can be applied to improve one or more aspects of the image or achieve special effects.
 

 Guided Edits selections for the Fun Edits section, which contains most of the new additions.
 Each Guided Edit has step-by-step instructions on what to do to achieve the desired result. We’ve covered the new Guided Edits below.

The  Expert  view gives users complete access to all of the tools available in Elements 15. It includes similar lighting and colour correction commands to those you’ll find in Photoshop, although their capabilities may have been simplified. Most of tools you’ll need for fixing image defects, making selections, adding text, painting on your image and adding visual effects can be found here.  

 The Expert  editing workspace.

These different levels provide users with a simple way to select the degree of complexity they want. They are easy to navigate and instructions are presented in a way that is easy to understand. Users with little prior experience can start with the Quick and Guided options and work up to the Expert workspace as they become more competent.

New Editing Functions
 Most of the new editing functions involve either tweaks to existing capabilities or the five new Guided Edits introduced in this release.
 Adjust facial features lets you modify the shape of various facial features to create more attractive portraits. Open photo you want to edit and click on Enhance > Adjust Facial Features.

 
 The subject’s face will be identified and marked with a circular highlighter and a dialog box will appear on the right side of the screen with sections covering Lips, Eyes, Nose and Face. Clicking on each button opens a set of slider adjustments that can be applied to each area.

 
We found the range of adjustments to be quite conservative and barely enough to ‘turn frowns into smiles’ as Adobe’s website suggests. But the adjustments are easy to do and they will make some difference, as shown in the comparative pictures below,
 

 The original is on the left, while the picture on the right has had adjustments made to the lips, eyes and face width.
 Speed pan lets you create a sense of motion by blurring the background behind a moving subject. Open the photos and Click Guided > Fun Edits > Speed Pan. Click on the Quick Selection tool (circled in red) and use it to select the subject you want to keep sharp.

 

The   tool has two buttons for refining the selection parameters: Add lets you add areas to the object selection and Subtract is for removing areas that must be part of the background with motion blur. The Brush Size tab lets you set the size of the brush.

Clicking on Add Motion Blur will blur the background to introduce a sense of movement in the photo.  You can vary the Intensity  and Angle of the blur with tools in this drop-down box. There’s also a Refine Effect Brush for fine-tuning the amount of motion blur applied.

Once you obtain the desired result, click on Next in the lower right corner  to choose how you would like to proceed. Options include Save / Save As, continue editing and sharing via Facebook, Flickr, Twitter or SmugMug Gallery.

Painterly is another new Guided Edit that lets you apply a framing effect over a subject and then add textures and colour themes to create an artistic result. Once you’re opened the image files, clicking on Guided > Fun Edits > Painterly opens a dialog column on the right side of the photo.

 
 Clicking on the Paint Brush button lets you ‘reveal’ the subject by ‘painting’ over it with the brush. You can choose from four brush types and adjust the size and opacity of the brush as well as the angle.

 

The next step is to select a canvas colour (black, white or a colour of your choice) and a texture for the canvas. The final step (optional) provides six artistic effects that can be applied to ‘finish’ the entire image.

 

If you want to add text to the picture you’ve created, swap to the Expert mode and select the Text button from the tool palette on the left side of the screen.

Photo Text lets you create text effects from your photos and includes tools for adding embossing and drop shadows. It’s a handy way to create text effects for book titles, collages, scrapbook pages, cards, signs and other printed materials.

Open the picture you want to use and select Guided > Fun Edits > Photo Text. Then click on the Type Tool, click anywhere on the photo and key in your text. You can resize the text   with the Fit or Fill options. Fit fits the text to the width of the photo, while fill expands the text to cover the width and height of the photo.

 
 You can change the font, size, and style of the text from the Tool Options bar below the Guided workspace. Clicking on the Crop Image button in the Photo Text tool palette lets you remove unwanted space around the text.

 

You can also apply bevels and drop shadows and adjust the stroke of the text and click on the Advanced button to open a box of Style Settings that provide more adjustments. When you are finished, click the green check mark to lock in your changes.

Effects Collage letsyou split a photograph into sections and apply different  effects to each area. Open the photo and select Guided > Fun Edits > Effects Collage. Choose how you want the picture divided from the four options in the layout panel and then select the combination of effects from the dropdown menu
 
 

 You can use the Opacity slider to vary the intensity of the effects applied to the photo.  

 Out of Bounds Frame Creator lets you add a frame to an image and display a selected part of the image outside the frame. Open the photo and in the Guided Edits  panel, select  Out Of Bounds. Click  Add Frame  and drag  the corners of the frame to leave a part of the main subject outside the frame.
 

 Add a perspective by pressing Control + Alt + Shift  and adjust the width of the frame border by dragging the boundaries.  Click the green check mark to apply these adjustments and use the Quick Selection  tool, select the part of the image that should extend outside the frame. Then click on Out of Bounds Effect.

 

Optional additions include the ability to add a shadow and add and adjust a Background Gradient before saving and/or sharing the end result.

Creative Options
 Clicking on the Create button opens a dropdown menuthat lists the following output options: Photo Prints, Greeting Card, Photo Calendar, Photo Collage, Facebook Cover, CD Jacket, DVD Jacket, CD/DVD Label and Slideshow. Most of these operations are template based and, although you can make some modifications to the templates, they generally limit you to minor adjustments involving the size of the image in the template frame, the size of the frame itself and, sometimes, the orientation of the frame.
 

 The Create dropdown menu.

Most options provide an Advanced setting that takes you into the Editor, where you can adjust colours, contrast and sharpness and make other modifications. In the basic mode, the main thing you can do is add pictures and text.

 One of the Calendar templates.

The templates are pretty limited. Calendar templates provide one or two alternating page designs, while photo books offer three alternating template pages plus a cover design. If you like the styles, you’ll be happy to use them; we were unimpressed.
 

 The Photo Book templates let you change the size of the pictures are the order in which they are laid down.

The Slideshow option lets you search through image folders and create a slideshow from the images you select. The slideshow is saved as a video movie and you can opt for 720p or 1080p resolution, depending on the capabilities of the screen it will be viewed on.

The Slideshow Builder.

Elements 15 will add background music to the slideshow and you can choose from seven ‘themes’ or opt for No Audio. A Browse button in the Audio menu lets you select one of the MP3 music clips you have stored on your computer (a good way to avoid the rather tinny sounding canned music provided).
 

 Audio soundtracks for slideshows.

Sharing
 Users can share their photo creations on Facebook, Flickr, Twitter or SmugMug Gallery and Elements 15 will automatically prepare the files in the appropriate format and at the optimal size for sharing. When you select a sharing website you will be asked for permission to upload the image(s) to the site. We didn’t try out these functions as we don’t use any of these social media.

Conclusion
 The questions that are always asked when new software is released are:
 
1. Is it worth buying this software?

2. Is it worth upgrading?

If this is your first foray into ‘serious’ image editing, Elements 15 is one of the most versatile and easiest to use programs available.  It’s also simple to use and 10 to 15 year-olds could have a heap of fun playing about with the various Guided Edits, filters and creative projects is provides. As such, it represents reasonably good value for money.

Serious photographers are likely to find Elements 15 frustrating to use, particularly if they have had any experience with Photoshop. For starters, many of the functions in Elements have different names from those in Photoshop and they are stored in different dropdown menus.

The ranges of adjustments they provide are frequently limited. This is particularly true of the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in, which is a pale shadow of the functionality you get in Photoshop.

However, being a stand-alone program, Photoshop Elements 15 is cheaper than a yearly subscription to Adobe’s Photoshop CC, which has to be renewed each year. An annual subscription to Photoshop CC, which includes Lightroom and regular updates, will cost you AU$11.99 per month (AU$143.88 per year) and includes your own portfolio website.    

Adobe has stopped offering upgrades for Photoshop Elements, which means that if you want to go from a previous version to Elements 15 you’ll need to buy the entire application. Frankly, we don’t think that’s worthwhile if you’re using Elements 14 because there’s not much difference between 14 and 15. If you’re using an older version, check out the differences listed in the table near the beginning of this review to help you decide. You won’t save much buy purchasing the software off-shore as the US$69.99 MSRP for the DVD equates to AU$90.57 at current conversion rates and postage must be added to that.
FOOTNOTE: Adobe has informed us that it does offer  upgrade pricing for existing customers; details can be found here.  

 

Rating

RRP: AU$99.99; US$69.99

• Features: 8.5
• Ease of Use: 8.8

 

Buy