Adobe gives Photoshop and Premiere Elements a facelift

Adobe recently updated its two popular consumer-based software packages. The new versions are known as Photoshop Elements 6 (image editing) and Premiere Elements 4 (video editing). The previous version of the image-editing package, Photoshop Elements 5, was one of the top performers in our Ratings of photo editing software packages (available to ConsumerReports.org subscribers). Each costs about $100 and together, as a bundle, they cost about $150. Both are available now in stores and online.

These applications are alternatives to Adobe's more professional versions, Photoshop CS3, and Premiere Pro CS3, both of which can be quite intimidating for the novice.

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This upgrade isn't the most extensive change I've seen for either title, but some of the new features sound intriguing:

In Photoshop Elements 6, a Guided Edit mode provides step-by-step instructions for various tasks, such as lightening or darkening photos. It looks especially useful for those who enjoy hands-on learning. For example, in this mode you can find instructions for what a mid-tone contrast slider does. Above this tool, you'll find a caption that reads, "affects only the medium-bright areas." Of course, there's always the help menu, but for those who like to learn by actually using the software, this guided mode appears promising.

Photoshop Elements 6 also has a more streamlined, cleaner interface. There are four tabs--Organize, Fix, Create, Share--that attempt to more narrowly focus the activity you're engaged in. When in the Organize tab, for instance, you'll do such tasks as sorting, tagging or searching through photos. When in the Fix tab, you'll crop, edit, or manipulate photos. It's an interface change that comes from Adobe's more advanced image-editing/photo organizing program, Adobe Lightroom, but I think it's a smart addition.

Another interesting new feature is called Photomerge Group Shot. In past versions, Photomerge has been the tool you used to create panoramas, that is, stitch photos together to create extra-wide landscapes. You can still do that in Photoshop Elements 6, but the group shot tool also lets you quickly combine two photos into a single composite shot. So, if you have, for instance, two nearly identical photos of three friends, you can quickly combine them into a composite shot using the best parts of each photograph. Once you select which parts you want to keep from one image, Adobe claims Photoshop Elements 6 will automatically and seamlessly merge the other image with the original.

Adobe Premiere Elements 4 has a new look as well, and includes some new color-coded tabs--Edit, Create Menus, and Share. It has a tab that Adobe says allows you to upload your movies directly to YouTube, the online video-sharing website service, or to mobile devices, such as an iPhone. Adobe has also added the ability to burn a movie to a Blu-ray disc. (As with the last version, Premiere Elements 4 can handle both standard definition and high definition video.) There are other new features, such as movie themes, which include special effects, transitions, titles, and other elements to enhance your movie.

Adobe says it has enhanced both software packages to improve their slide show features, which let you work in a virtual timeline, dropping in still and video images as well as music files to produce a movie file that can be burned onto a disc and played on a computer or DVD player. Slide show functionality has been included in many digital cameras for a number of years, letting you run a presentation, often with sound, right on the camera's LCD. However, you have much more control and many more options using software, for example, the ability to set transitions (how one image or video fades into another), add text, create borders around photos, and when creating a video, the ability to create elaborate menus.

By tying together a variety of media, software like Photoshop Elements 6 and Premiere Elements 4 expand your ability to create interactive multimedia slide shows. Here's an example of one of the most sophisticated slide shows I've seen, most likely created using professional editing software, by renowned photojournalist Ed Kashi based on his incredible project on Kurdistan.

The piece can be broken down into a number of components: a sound track, transitions between images, some text and many, many photographs. Although most of us might not be able to capture the extraordinary compositions that Kashi does, with ever-more powerful image- and video-editing software, more and more we're able to access many of the same tools.

[October 2, 2007 Update: As blog reader SL notes in this post's comments, if you use a Mac, you'll need to buy an older version of the software, Photoshop Elements 4 for Mac. According to Adobe's press release, Photoshop Elements 6 for the Mac platform will be available in early 2008. And for now, there is no Mac-compatible version for Premiere Elements in the works.--Ed]   

--Terry Sullivan