In summary
The latest version of a popular and accomplished image editor for photo enthusiasts.Adobe’s Photoshop Elements is now in its ninth edition and each version has provided incremental improvements on its predecessor. In Photoshop Elements 9, Mac users gain access to the Organiser cataloguing function, which Windows users have had since Elements 8, while users on both platforms benefit from additional functions and special effects. . . [more]
Full review
Adobe’s Photoshop Elements is now in its ninth edition and each version has provided incremental improvements on its predecessor. In Photoshop Elements 9, Mac users gain access to the Organiser cataloguing function, which Windows users have had since Elements 8, while users on both platforms benefit from additional functions and special effects.
As in previous versions, Photoshop Elements 9 borrows some of the tools from the full professional Photoshop but adapts them to amateur usage. This enables enthusiasts to correct blemishes in images and apply sophisticated effects without requiring extensive training.
Installation
Regardless of whether you buy it in a box from a retail store or download it directly from Adobe’s website, installing Photoshop Elements 9 should be straightforward. A 30-day trial download is available from Adobe’s website (www.adobe.com/ap/products/photoshopel/). The trial version can be converted into a purchase online.
The download file is pretty large (1.75GB) so you’ll need a fast broadband connection if you trial the application or purchase it online. The trial version is fully functional and offers every feature of the product for you to test-drive. If you buy Photoshop Elements 9 before December 31, 2010, you can take advantage of a 25% discount on the onOne Photo Essentials 3 plug-in for Photoshop Elements and buy it for $52.47 instead of the normal price of $69.95.
Installation is wizard-based and takes just under 10 minutes. Once the application has been installed a welcome screen appears each time Photoshop Elements 9 is opened asking you whether you are new to Elements or have an earlier version.
There appears to be no way of preventing this screen being shown if it’s superfluous to your requirements – although you can elect to have the Organiser or Edit screen display behind it. Clicking on the displayed page takes you directly to it. You can also click on the Organise or Edit buttons displayed on the screen to access either workspace.
The Organiser
The Organiser is a cataloguing application that handles image uploading and all aspects of file management. The default setting for the Organiser is to show thumbnails, which are catalogued according to the date/time on which they were imported. You can click on any image and use the Properties window to display full image metadata.
The Organiser can be used for setting up Albums as well as transferring files to folders, tagging and rating images. It also allows you to add captions and rename and sort files.
Tagging and rating images in the Organiser.
You can set the Organiser to automatically get new photographs from a connected camera or card reader. By default, the Organiser looks for new photographs in My Pictures or Pictures. However, you can also make it look for files that appear in ‘Watch’ folders you specify and notify you when new files are added.
The Organiser workspace showing the different things you can do with selected images.
The Auto-analyser function, which carries over from Elements 8, is designed to classify pictures according to their photographic characteristics and will look for things like the presence of faces, whether a shot is in focus and other factors affecting the quality of the shot. It took approximately 10 seconds to carry out an analysis on our 64-bit Windows 7 system.
The resulting tags weren’t particularly helpful since they only indicated the image resolution (‘high quality’ if more than about 2MB) and whether the shot was sharp or blurred. Unfortunately, many images that were differentially focused or had clouds covering more than about 30% of the frame were tagged as ‘blurred’ even though the main subject was pin-sharp.
The Organiser also supports geotagging and can display maps showing where shots were taken if catalogued images contain location data. You can combine this with keyword tagging and geotag images without location data if you know where shots were recorded.
Geotagging a selected image.
Displaying the image with a location map showing where tagged photos were taken.
A new addition to the Organiser is the ability to share photos via Facebook and other online social networking services. You can also create interactive Online Albums with animated templates and, as in previous editions, attach pictures to emails for sharing or burn collections of shots (including slideshows) to optical disks.
Sharing options available through the Organiser and Editor.
Editing with Elements 9
The main change to the Edit workspace is the addition of a new ‘content intelligence’ function in the Spot Healing Brush, which has been adapted from Photoshop CS5’s Content Aware Fill feature. This tool can be used to remove poles and wires from scenic shots or taking out tourists from a crowded scene.
Having selected the Spot Healing Brush, you’re presented with three options in the top toolbar: Proximity Match, Create Texture and Content-Aware (the new addition). As in Photoshop, this tool is best used on small areas. When you use it on larger areas the results are usually hit-and-miss and somewhat unpredictable, as shown in the example below.
The same content intelligence is used to synthesise missing pixel information when you’re stitching shots together to produce a panorama. However, the best way to do this is via the File menu by selecting New > Photomerge Panorama.
This opens a function that is essentially the same as the Photomerge function in Photoshop, allowing you to set blending, vignette removal and geometric distortion correction. (These settings weren’t available in Elements 7, which included the same Photomerge function.) The end result is a stitch that’s as good as we obtained with Photoshop.
You can combine up to 10 images with this tool and, at the end the software will ask you if you want to fill in the missing areas using the content-aware function. You should only click on ‘Yes’ if the missing areas – and adjacent areas – are free of details (such as a clear blue sky or uniformly coloured and textured foreground. The application will struggle if there are clouds in the sky and will probably produce unsatisfactory results.
Unfortunately, Elements 9 doesn’t include a warping tool for correcting curved horizons. Consequently, you may be stuck with a curved result that is difficult to correct with the available tools (although you may be able to come close with some panoramas if you rotate and crop the image then use the straightening tool).
Layer masks are the other important new addition to Elements 9’s editing palette. This tool is used to create resolution-dependent bitmap images that are edited with the painting or selection tools. You can use the paint brush to add or subtract from the masked region without losing the layer pixels.
One common application of layer masks is changing the colour or tone of a selected area of an image. For example, you can select an area and use a layer mask to recover a coloured subject when the rest of the image has been converted into monochrome, as shown in the illustration below.
They can also be useful for things like boosting colour saturation or contrast on selected areas in images. Another application is for copying parts of one image and pasting them into another and you can create several different layers to produce composite images in this way.
As long as you don’t flatten the image, you can continue to create layer masks and apply them. This makes layer masking a very sophisticated editing tool – and a valuable addition to Photoshop Elements.
The Quick Edit workspace is largely unchanged since Elements 7. It provides the basic suite of editing sliders, which includes Smart Fix plus adjustments for Lighting, Colour, Balance and Sharpness. None of them supports the same degree of fine-tuning as you get in Photoshop but all allow you to make the most frequently-required corrections with reasonable ease.
The rest of the new additions are in the Guided editing workspace, which is designed for novice users and provides step-by-step instructions for achieving specified end results. Serious photographers should probably avoid this area as it provides few genuinely useful adjustments and some functions (particularly Recompose) are frustrating to use. However, some of the new additions are fun to use and can deliver worthwhile results – provided you’re prepared to spend time learning how to use them.
The Recompose workspace. (We were unable to obtain satisfactory results with this or several other images we tried to work on with this function.)
Even novice users should avoid the Photomerge settings if they wish to stitch images into a panorama. The process is much more complex and frustrating than the Photomerge function in the Full Edit workspace – and most end results leave a lot to be desired in comparison.
Attempting to stitch a panorama with the Photomerge settings in the Guided editing workspace.
Fortunately, the Exposure setting in the Photomerge group does quite a good job when combining images shot with different exposure levels (HDR exposures) and a useful tool is provided to help you superimpose the shots correctly.
The Photomerge settings also contain a new Style Match sub-menu, which lets you apply pre-set ‘styles’ to your own photos. This tool is worth exploring as it includes sliders for adjusting the intensity and clarity of the effect plus brushes for selectively erasing and applying the selected style. Since most of the styles provided tend to posterise images, these tools can be handy for local control over where the effects are applied and the strength of the adjustments.
Without adjustments, the Style Match settings tend to posterise images.
However, enough selective adjustments are provided to make this tool worth exploring. (The image on the left is before adjustments; on the right shows the results of several selective adjustments.)
Several new ‘Fun Edits’ (in other words, special effects) have been added to the Guided editing workspace, including a Lomo Camera Effect, which increases contrast and vignettes the image. There’s also an ‘Out of Bounds’ setting that lets you extend part of the picture outside of the normal boundary (some cropping is involved).
Before and after images showing the Lomo Camera Effect.
Other ‘Fun Edits’ include a Perfect Portrait setting that allows you so smooth out wrinkles, brighten eyes, correct red-eye in flash shots, selectively darken eyelashes and whiten teeth. You can also add some ‘glow’ and slim subjects via ‘special touch-ups’ buttons.
Perfect Portrait adjustments.
The Pop Art setting lets you posterise shots and add colour fill adjustments. You can then create a duplicate image showing four different colour effects.
The Pop Art effect.
The most potentially useful tool in this sub-menu is the Reflections tool, which lets you add a reflection to a subject. You can choose between Floor, Glass and Water reflections and adjust the intensity or add distortion to produce the result you want.
Adding a reflection.
A Gradient tool allows you to apply a varying intensity to the reflection from the lowest point to the base of the original image. End results can be surprisingly effective if you put in the time to tweak the available settings.
Additions to the Create workspace include templates for producing a Photo Calendar, Photo Prints and Photo Stamps. Most of the templates have been redesigned and are more attractive than those provided in Elements 7. While they may not suit users who require greater flexibility with their layout choices, for novice users, these templates provide easy ways to use digital photos in popular ways.
One of the Calendar templates.
Although there are a lot of functions we would never use, overall Elements 9 provides most of the key tools photo enthusiasts require for an affordable price tag. Like Photoshop, it requires you to spend time learning the capabilities and limitations of these tools but, once they are mastered, there will be few things you can’t do with this application.
Should You Upgrade?
Photographers who constantly upgrade to the latest edition of any image editor usually end up forking out a lot of money. For most of us, it can pay to skip a couple of generations and catch up when the new version provides an important tool you’ve missed in the version you’re using. Essentially, your decision should be based on whether the new tools will add new capabilities or improve the existing capabilities of your current image editor.
For Mac users, the decision is relatively easy: if you want the Organiser, the upgrade will be worthwhile. If, like me, you can’t stand any application that wants to take over the way you manage image files, you could probably give Elements 9 a miss.
Windows users are faced with a more difficult decision. If this is your first foray into ‘proper’ image editing, Elements 9 is definitely a program we would recommend. For the tools it provides and the effectiveness of those tools, Elements has no rival and represents good value for money.
If you’re already using Elements 8 (or even Elements 7), upgrading is less urgent and your decision will depend on how much you want the new features. Enthusiastic users of Facebook (or other social networking sites) may justify the upgrade on its easy compatibility. However, if you’re simply looking for a Facebook uploader, there are plenty of freeware applications available.
If you have a Windows desktop and Mac OS X laptop (or vice versa), the single-user license allows you to install the software on both and, for the first time the Windows and Mac versions are being sold in the same package.
On the day we posted this review, the US-based Adobe website had Elements 9 listed at US$49.99 via an ‘instant discount and mail-in rebate’. RRP from this site is US$99.99, which is significantly less than its price in Australia, even with our currency at near parity with the US dollar. Special ‘Black Friday’ deals through Adorama and Amazon had it priced at US$45 after mail-in rebates. (And they wonder why increasing numbers of Australians have begun to buy popular products like this off-shore.)
Specifications
Systems compatibility: Windows XP (Service Pack 2), Vista and 7; Mac OSX v 10.5.8 and higher
Disk space requirement: 7GB
Minimum RAM: 2GB
Display requirements: 1024 x 768 dot resolution
Computer interface: DVD-ROM drive for loading software from disks
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Rating
Aust RRP: $145.75 (Upgrade $104.50)
Rating (out of 10):
- Features: 9.0
- Performance: 8.5
- Interface Design: 9.0
- Ease of Use: 8.5
- OVERALL: 9.0