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Overview and features
Adobe Photoshop may be the world's most famous image-editor, but it's a complex, professional tool with a professional price tag. Photoshop Elements is the 'amateur' alternative. It's much cheaper and it's designed not just for experts, but novices and intermediate photographers too.
It's designed around Adobe Photoshop, and in its Full Edit mode it has many similarities with Photoshop and the same techniques can often be used in both programs. Some of Photoshop's more advanced features have been taken away in Elements, though, and a range of novice-friendly quick fix tools and effects have been added, with Quick and Guided Edit modes designed for less experienced users.
Elements is also designed more as a complete end-to-end tool for all your photographic activities. It comes with an Organizer which you can use to catalog your whole photo collection, offers simple image enhancement tools and can be used to launch a whole series of 'creations' like photo books, greetings cards and more.
You can get Photoshop Elements on its own, but it's also available as a bundle with Adobe Premiere Elements, Adobe's amateur-orientated video editing program. This has the same relationship to Adobe Premiere as Elements does to Photoshop. The Organizer works with both programs, which is why you'll see references to video, even if you just go for the Elements-only version.
New features for Elements 10
Elements 10 comes with a list of enhancements to both the Organizer and the Elements editor itself. The Organizer gets some interesting new visual search tools which use clever image-analysis techniques. Not everyone has the time or patience to apply keywords to their photos, so this offers an alternative way of finding matching images where the software does the work, not you.
There are enhancements for social networkers, too. You can now use your Facebook friends list to tag photos, and it's possible to upload videos straight to YouTube. It's never been that hard to do using YouTube's own upload tools, but you might find it useful to be able to do it from within the Organizer.
Improvements to the Elements editor include 30 new Smart Brush effects and patterns which you can paint straight on to your photos. There are three new Guided Edit effects, too, for those who want to enhance their pictures and learn at the same time.
New overlays for the Crop tool help you compose your photos more effectively according to the Rule of Thirds and the Golden Mean, and it's now possible to add text to a path (curved line), the outline of a shape or a selection. This won't hold much interest if you use Elements mainly for photography, but it enables you to add more interesting text effects to greetings cards, calendars and other photo creations.
Making Photos Pop with Innovative Tools
Powered by the same engine as Adobe Photoshop, the industry standard for digital imaging, Photoshop Elements 10 utilizes intelligent technology that makes it easy to give everyday photos a boost. Photoshop technology is brought to life through easy to follow steps for achieving stunning photo effects in an approachable way with new Guided Edits, which are very popular and successful. These include innovations such as creating a shallow depth of field or designing a fun layout of snapshots with Picture Stack, or even adding a dream-like diffused glow with the Orton effect.
New text functionality, which scrapbookers will especially love, allows users to add curving, flowing text to a photo that automatically follows the outline of a subject, custom path or shape. In addition, special crop guides now help users at any level easily achieve interesting, visually appealing compositions. Also, the Smart Brush lets users paint unique effects onto specific areas of photos and now features 30 new effects like Pencil Sketch and Oil Pastel.
Organize Like Never Before
With Photoshop Elements 10, users not only have access to fun editing and creation features, but also the ability to organize photos. Object Search automatically finds objects within photos, such as a landmark, flower or pet. The Elements Organizer can even automatically detect duplicate or near-duplicate photos so users can clean up and delete the photos they don’t need and quickly group similar collections of photos. Also, photo enthusiasts who shoot video can now upload their clips directly to Facebook or YouTube.
Photoshop Elements 10 users can purchase Adobe’s integrated online service, Photoshop Elements Plus, which includes 20GB of storage for automatic online backup and sharing (up to 15,000 photos or four hours of DVD-quality video), as well as access to an extensive library of how-to's, artwork and Online Album templates for sharing online.
Sharing Made Seamless
Whether users are social networking or using sharing sites like Facebook, Flickr, YouTube or Photoshop.com, Photoshop Elements 10 lets customers share their photos directly from within the Elements Organizer and view them from virtually anywhere on the go, offering a comprehensive set of sharing capabilities for today’s increasingly social and mobile worlds. For Facebook lovers, Photoshop Elements integrates users’ Facebook Friend Lists for easily tagging photos that can then be shared directly to Facebook.
On top of all these new features and capabilities, Photoshop Elements 10 enables developers to create tablet and mobile applications that interact with the software via the included API. This opens Photoshop Elements 10 to a new world where the fun and interactivity of touch devices and Photoshop Elements intersect.
Enjoy.