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Boomer & Carton Photos: February 2012

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  • Baitong

    Review by Dawn S. Miller for Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 (Win/Mac) Rating: I uegardpd from Photoshop Elements (PSE) 6 for Windows to PSE9 for Mac and was glad to see that the Mac and Windows versions were essentially the same. Since I use iPhoto for organizing, I can’t say anything about PSE’s Organizer, but I gave the Editor a workout.Elements is at the high end of what I’ll spend for a photo editor, and I buy roughly every third version to keep the price reasonable over the years, so it’s time, and I’m happy to say that 9.0 fits my needs . . . and then some.Like PSE6, PSE9 it is a great overall photo editor. It does a good job of enhancing photos, either with a click of a button or just a few clicks if I happen to disagree with the Auto Smart Fix. It can process batches of photos that all need the same work done to them. And it has enough manual controls (histograms, contrast, brightness, shadows/highlights, red eye, color correction, layers, etc.) to do just about anything to a photo you can imagine.Pros: * It works smoothly with iPhoto; I could switch back and forth easily and quickly and open multiple photos at once for editing. * It’s fast on my MacBook Pro. * The editor hasn’t crashed yet, and I’m running through thousands of photos. * All of the features that I’m familiar with from previous versions still work well, and some, like the magic lasso, work even better than before. * Content-aware healing can perform minor miracles in my hands. In the hands of an expert, or someone with more patience, it can probably perform major miracles. * The Guided Edits helped me visualize the steps involved for some of the more complicated features, which helped me make better use of the Full Edit. * PhotoMerge Group Shot is incredibly easy to use. I had two photos shot at different distances, and PSE had no trouble making the necessary adjustments. * Removing clutter from photographs is simple. * Oh happy day, Elements now has layer masks, a feature that used to be the domain of its pricier sibling. Now you can make parts of a layer more or less opaque, allowing for some really neat effects. I won’t use this often, but a few of my photos are just crying out for it.Cons: * The Welcome Screen is still annoying. Fortunately, you can set it up to go straight to the Organizer or Editor. * It still can’t batch process the Save for Web feature. Sigh. * My camera has a panorama assistant but doesn’t stitch them together, so I was interested in PSE9 s enhanced panorama stitching. For the most part, it’s very easy. PSE does most of the work. Unfortunately, it created an enormous file 117mg out of my five 5mg photos and ran out of RAM before it could finish everything even after I maxed out the RAM in Preferences. I ended up with a very nice panorama but had to reduce the file size before doing some of the final touches myself. Then the final jpeg size turned out to be smaller than any of the individual photos. * Yeah, I would have liked a manual.If you are currently using PSE 8, there may not be enough new features to warrant an upgrade yet, though the content-aware healing might make it worth it. From version 6? Definitely.If you have never used Elements, this is a great application with a bit of a learning curve. Get the free one-month trial, and borrow a book on it from the library. That’s where I’ll be headed once the manuals for version 9 show up.

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