TechRevu Review

Adobe Photoshop Elements & Premiere Elements 7
Review by David Em
Adobe CD-ROM ISBN/ITEM#: B001DMBX7S
Date: 11 December 2008 List Price $149.99 Amazon US / Amazon UK / Show Official Info /

Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Elements 7 bundle brings high-quality image and video editing to the masses at an affordable price

Adobe is the Microsoft of the imaging world, with a host of professional graphics, video, and web products that dominate their market segments. Two of these are Photoshop and Premiere Pro, a world class video editor.

The company aims to own the consumer imaging space as well as the professional one, and to that end they've produced Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements, Lite versions of their pro-level namesakes, now up to version 7. You can buy Photoshop Elements 7 and Premiere Elements 7 individually or together as a bundle.

Adobe's also pushing Photoshop.com, a web-based online storage and exhibition service that's integrated into the Elements apps. You get two gigabytes of storage for free when you sign up. Twenty gigabytes costs $19.99 per year for a Basic membership and $49.99 for a Plus membership that throws in some extra goodies. I'll have more to say about Photoshop.com below.

"LITENED UP" OR DUMBED DOWN?

Before delving into the programs' capabilities, let's talk a little about their look and feel. There's no question that the code under the hood is strong. In many cases the tools are identical in function, if not appearance, to their pro counterparts.

Adobe's gone to significant lengths to keep the Elements programs from appearing intimidating to new users. There are many wizards and templates designed to help you along the way to producing a satisfactory print or video. This is all to the good, since these functions aren't inherently easy to perform; getting really good at image enhancement or video editing takes a lot of time and skill.

Adobe's success at simplifying these capabilities for novices is mixed. Many of the EZ features give you the feeling you're playing with a toy instead of using a tool. Many of the jazzy controls appear to have been designed for children instead of amateurs who have no interest or need for the full-blown professional packages.

The overall look and feel of the interface is a choice on the part of Adobe, and perhaps it's the right one for their target audience. However, it's hard not to compare it to Apple's iPhoto and iWeb apps that do many of the same things more elegantly.

The difference between the two approaches is that the Apple tools feel sleek and efficient. Like the Elements apps, they aren't nearly as complex as professional programs, but they give you the feeling that they've enabled you to do something easily that in other circumstances might be very difficult, and without giving the impression of talking down to you.

PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS

Photoshop Elements 7 is organized into four components called Organize, Fix, Create, and Share. As its name implies, Organize is an asset management tool to order and label your images. The big advance in this version is a very useful text search feature that uses keywords that can include captions, shot date, file names and camera models.

You can choose one of three work streams to use with the Fix module, depending on your level of proficiency: Quick Fix, Guided Edit, and Full Edit. There are automatic fixes for functions such as contrast, sharpening, and color balance, and step-by-step guided instruction for more complex effects such as producing a simulation of a line drawing from a photograph.

You can also play Stalin with Scene Cleaner, which guides you through how to eliminate unwanted people from group photographs. Photoshop Elements 7 has some SmartBrushes such as Teeth Whitener and Bluer Skies that perform pretty much as advertised, although the automatic masks they create to perform their functions can be a little coarse at the edges.

There's a Surface Blur tool to smooth people's skin, but the results become too blurry if you're not careful. There are also some multi-step macros to perform some of these sorts of functions, but unfortunately you can't make your own. This version of Elements supports camera RAW files, showing that Elements can deal with high quality image data.

On the output side, you can produce prints, slideshows, books, calendars, and that sort of thing with or without all sorts of cheesy and garish themed templates. You can also upload online albums of images to Photoshop.com. A nice feature is that if you use Photoshop.com for backup, Photoshop Elements will make sure your local and remote files are synced up.

PREMIERE ELEMENTS

Premiere Elements imports most standard digital video formats and the newer AVCHD (requires a couple gigabytes of RAM and serious horsepower) as well as from devices such as mobile phones and webcams. The program will analyze and tag your footage to break it up into clips and identify problems such as blur and shake. The scene detection actually works pretty well.

Editing your video and audio clips is very straightforward. There's an automatic blue/greenscreen feature intended for instant background replacement. Your mileage may vary on this one, since properly lighting for bluescreen work is a somewhat specialized skill. Automagically pulling a good mask from a poorly lit scene is an iffy proposition. You're likely to get more use out of the SmartSound soundtracks that automatically adjust timing to the length of your movie.

Another new feature is InstantMovie. First you choose a template such as My Road Trip or Extreme Sports. Then the program analyzes your video, mixes it up in peculiar ways, adds Flashy Effects! Transitions! Wild and Wacky Sounds! and proceeds to edit your video for you. The results can be highly amusing, but once again, this seems more suited for the Child Within than a regular person who wants to edit a video of the local school play or even an All Star kids' soccer match.

On the output side, you can make navigation menus for DVDs and render your videos to the usual formats, as well as export straight to YouTube.

PHOTOSHOP.COM

Photoshop.com takes on other media sharing sites such as Flickr and Facebook. You can upload films, photos, and online albums, which can be private or public. After you upload images or videos, you can automatically email a list of friends and invite them to take a look. Since you can access your site from any computer, you can do slide shows or share pictures with people from almost anywhere.

The Photoshop.com interface needs work. I found navigating it somewhat roundabout, and after looking at other people's albums, had trouble getting back to my own area. The text is tiny and hard to read on even a medium res LCD.

It would also be useful to be able to perform image corrections to your images online. You can upload data from mobile phones, but only specific models running a Windows OS, which is a pretty small subset of the communications universe.

WRAP

Like all Adobe's current crop of products, Photoshop and Premiere Elements 7 deliver considerable bang for the buck. They have everything it takes for a novice to edit and share images or video with professional level results. The Photoshop.com service also offers good value, although Adobe needs to put some work into improving its ease of use and adding to its functionality.

Elements 7 currently runs only under Windows XP and Vista. Photoshop and Premiere Elements 7 retail individually for $99.99 ($79.99 and $83.49 respectively on Amazon). The Photoshop/Premiere Elements 7 bundle reviewed here lists for $149.95. I found it on Amazon for $119.99 less a $30 discount, totaling $89.99, which is less than dinner for two at a decent restaurant.

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