What can be said of Adobe Photoshop and its basic Elements suite that hasn’t been said before? For more than a decade, Adobe Photoshop has been ubiquitous among graphic designers and other digital media professionals, providing these designers with a palette of tools and features to mold, shape, edit and create images within an easy to use interface. Over the years, the program, its interface, tools and features may have evolved and expanded, but its importance and stature have remain firmly fixed.
Adobe Photoshop Elements should not be confused with its sibling product, Photoshop. Though with that said, Photoshop Elements should not be considered a pared down or “diet” version of the original and still-current Photoshop. Rather, Photoshop Elements is the distillation of the larger Photoshop program, giving users a great deal of the high-watermark-setting tool and feature-sets at a fraction of the price and, more importantly, making Photoshop accessible and usable for amateurs and professionals alike. It is for these reasons and others that Adobe Photoshop Elements is the recipient of the "TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award".
Before we come to the long-form critique, the following strengths and weaknesses stood out while using Adobe Photoshop Elements:
Standout Features
- Full Integration with All Adobe Products
- Plug-In Functionality with Lightroom and CS4
- Pro Version Upgrade
Considering the amount of Photoshop tutorials and user guides in existence for the full Photoshop CS4 program, much of Photoshop Elements value comes in its surprising user-friendliness—as well as its price tag. It’s design and editing features might not be as robust as the full version, but, the feature and toolsets that remain are the one that see the most regular use in the full, anyway.
Adobe Photoshop largely began as an image design software program before expanding to include image editing features (the term “Photoshop” itself has been converted into a phrasal verb to refer to any image layering, object removal, extraction, etc.). These editing features affect the same professional-level quality as their image design counterparts.
Adobe Photoshop Elements provides toolsets that address (automatically, even) simple touch-up needs like blemish and red-eye removal, as well as more advanced tools and features like the Spot Healing Brush and cloner tool, which are designed for fixes that require more precision. Photoshop Elements strikes an incredible balance between simple and complex tasks, but never does so at the cost of its overall usability. This becomes apparent with its levels adjustments windows. Users can make changes manually with drag-and-pull functionality or through precise, data input. All changes are reflected in real-time with the gradient tool, and can be previewed before actually being input.
Adobe Photoshop made a name for itself with its design features early on. With Photoshop Elements, the tradition is continued, albeit with a lighter torch. There might be fewer layering and carte-blanche image creation, but what Elements does offer are, more or less, the tried and true tools that are used the most by graphic designers. Though Photoshop Elements has everyday needs and projects in mind with its page design templates and album creation features, it can still be used to a certain degree for more nuanced image creation using its photo merge feature or its paint-like palette to draw and color from scratch.
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