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With unbeatable fl exibility in processing images, Adobe Photoshop can be considered as the single all-purpose photo editor for professionals. Be it the the fl exibility of working with layers, the ability to work with different formats of images, or the excellent RAW processing features with Camera RAW plug-in, Photoshop clearly enjoys a special status with professional photographers. An irritant, though, in the Photoshop family has always been the high price, which denied amateurs of all the goodies. But much to the relief of the amateurs, Adobe maintains a lighter, simpler, and yet feature-packed version called Photoshop Elements.Photoshop Elements 8, the latest from the Elements family, has several improvements including, but not limited to Windows 7 support, a feature-packed Organizer, and better automation features.

KEY FEATURES

The Photoshop Elements 8 is feature-packed compared to the previous models. It features an advanced Auto-Analyzer, which analyzes the images and tag them as high/low/medium quality, audio, blurred or in focus, faces, high or low contrast, motion, no objects, single object, multiple objects, shaky, and too bright or too dark. Another feature is Automatic People Recognition, which tries to recognize people in the photographs using the labeling you have already done.Elements 8 allows you to edit images in full screen mode, and you can open the image for editing directly from the Organizer. The Organizer  allows you to manage images, videos, and pdf fi les.

The Photoshop Elements 8 Editor features a new Recompose tool, which can be used to recompose any photograph by changing the dimensions without cropping or distorting key subjects. The tool allows you to indicate which elements you need to protect in the frame and which one to remove, so that the photograph can be recomposed without the main subject getting affected. Elements 8 also includes Photomerge, which can be used to merge multiple shots to get a perfectly aligned panorama, or remove unwanted moving objects in the frame. This can also be used to merge images with different exposures to create a perfectly lit shot. In the Create option, you can share photos using your iPhone, online Photo Albums, emails and several other ways. The Create option allows you to create Photo Books, Photo Calendars, Greeting Cards, Photo Collages, Slide Shows, Instant Movies, DVD with Menu, Flipbooks etc.

If you are in the US, you get additional goodies like online storage, automatic online backup, synchronization of images with any internet-enabled computer, and ongoing tutorials.

EASE OF USE

Photoshop Elements 8 is very easy to use, period. The software comes packed with tutorials and instructions, and the layout is very user-friendly. After using the Creative Suite versions for quite some time, we did not feel any basic feature missing in this version. The dark background makes it even more appealing.

PERFORMANCE

Photoshop Elements 8 impressed us with all its new features. The Organizer is feature-packed. It tagged the images very well according to the characteristics. The software recognized people in images with surprising accuracy, though it needed a little assistance for accurate tagging. The automation features also impressed us a lot. The new Recompose tool proved to be a very useful tool for photographers, especially when you want to remove unwanted elements who have strayed into the frame while taking the photograph.

Photoshop Elements 8 provides support for the RAW formats of all the cameras that are included in the latest and upcoming versions of Adobe Camera Raw. In the Basic option, the Camera Raw plugin allows you to fi ne-tune most image parameters like color temperature, tint, exposure, brightness, contrast, clarity, vibrance, and saturation. The other options are Sharpening, Noise Reduction, and Camera Calibration. If you are a beginner, and are not familiar with the Editor (Edit Full option) of Photoshop, you can edit the photograph with Edit Guided option, which will guide you through the editing process. On the other hand, if you do not care about the full Editor, you can choose the Edit Quick mode, which makes the process very simple with easy-to-use tools.  The features we really missed in the Elements series from the full version are Curves and Layer Masking.