Photoshop Elements 6.0

Adobe promised to make photo editing easier than ever, and, boy, it delivered with Photoshop Elements 6.0. Brimming with new features such as a Guided Edit mode, an amazing PhotoMerge Group Shot feature, and a slew of tools snatched from Photoshop CS3 tucked inside brand-new workspaces, Photoshop Elements 6.0 makes photo editing for amateur photographers, hobbyists, and scrapbookers more accessible – and more fun – than ever before.

Right off the bat, you’ll notice a sparkling new Welcome screen prompting you to start a photo-editing project from scratch, browse with Adobe Bridge (nearly the full version from Photoshop CS3), import pictures from your digital camera or scanner, or open a recently viewed image.

Once Photoshop Elements 6.0 loads you’re greeted with a charcoal grey interface that’s easier on the eyes than the superbright interface of old. Although the new interface certainly makes photos “pop” on screen, we did find some dialogue boxes difficult to read.

Included in Photoshop Elements 6.0 is the Adobe Bridge photo-management program, which lets users view, sort, and organise their ever-expanding photo collections.

By viewing a photo’s metadata, for example, you can learn which aperture, shutter-speed, and ISO settings worked and which did not. Such information is crucial for both learning and experimentation.

Within Bridge, you can use the Loupe tool to inspect a photo pixel by pixel without ever opening the image file. You can select multiple photos and compare them, side-by-side, in the preview area; you can apply keywords, descriptions, and ratings to your photos and then use Bridge’s filtering capabilities to find photos more efficiently; plus, you can rearrange the wealth of viewable information and customise the Bridge workspace, then save it for future use.

Of course, you don’t have to use Bridge to use Photoshop Elements 6.0.

Editing for everyone
To make photo editing truly accessible for novices and gurus alike, Adobe divided the Photoshop Elements 6.0 editing workspace into three modes.

Experienced pixel-pushers will gravitate toward the Full Edit, “do anything” mode, while Quick Edit mode (previously dubbed Quick Fix) gives beginners a subset of the most frequently used tools.

Those completely new to digital image editing will appreciate the helping hand of Guided Edit mode, which poses a series of short questions to lead you to the correct tool, in the correct order, complete with instructions on how to use it. In both Quick and Guided Edit modes, users are treated to a handy before-and-after preview – a feature Photoshop CS3 doesn’t even have. Photoshop Elements 6.0 lets users jump easily from one editing mode to the other, allowing them room to grow as their skills increase.

New goodies snatched from Photoshop CS3 include the Quick Selection Tool – great for “painting” selections onto an object – and the Refine Edge dialogue, which lets users preview selection feathering, as well as smooth, contract, and expand selections. (When a selection tool is active, you’ll see it in both the Options bar and the Select menu.)

The new Correct Camera Distortion filter not only corrects barrel distortion (a result of zooming with lower-quality lenses), but can also add a dark edge vignette (a nice finishing touch for portraits).
Photoshop Elements 6.0’s new Quick Selection Tool, borrowed from Photoshop CS3, allows you to paint a selection onto an object using a familiar brush cursor.

Also new is the Adjust Colour Curves command, a limited version of pro photographers’ colour-correction tool of choice. Tweaking the individual Adjust Highlights, Midtone Brightness, Midtone Contrast, and Adjust Shadows sliders cause the colour curve to change on the fly, so you get a feel for how the tool works.

A Convert to Black and White command now lives within the Enhance menu, and comes with six presets plus a big before-and-after preview for creating richer colour-to-greyscale conversions. The Enhance menu is also home to the new Unsharp Mask tool, which has long been the final step in pro-level photo editing.

Photographers will appreciate increased Raw support with version 4.3.1 of the Raw converter.

This dynamically updatable plug-in features a filmstrip view, which lets you apply adjustments and presets to multiple shots in one fell swoop. (The filmstrip is viewable only when you’re looking at multiple shots at once.) The new Recovery slider (for highlights) and Blacks slider (for darkening blacks) are useful for adding definition and depth and making photos pop. You can also save conversion settings for later use in Bridge, where you can apply them to multiple photos.

The ever-expanding Effects palette rounds out the editing features and contains a plethora of colour tints, drop shadows, type, and other photo treatments. Oddly, however, these effects require a double-click, though large buttons typically require just one.

Merging Madness
For years, Elements users have been happily stitching photos into wide-angle beauties using PhotoMerge Panorama. In Photoshop Elements 6.0, Adobe has added two new merge tools to the mix: PhotoMerge Group Shot and PhotoMerge Faces.

One of the most challenging aspects of photographing groups of people is capturing a moment in which everyone is smiling at the same time with their eyes open. Elements’ new PhotoMerge Group Shot feature eliminates this problem by auto-aligning and merging up to 10 photos into a single, perfect shot.

While the PhotoMerge Group Shot is truly amazing, it’s not a compositing tool. It works only when the photos are very similar, meaning the photographer and subjects haven’t moved.

PhotoMerge Faces creates a single face from the features of two different ones. So if you’ve ever coveted someone else’s nose, lips or hair, you can use this tool to create a whole new, creepier you.
Those wanting to take the next step in photo editing need look no further than Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0. Hobbyists and scrapbookers will find everything they need (and more) to get their masterpieces out of the computer with the new Create and Share workspaces. The new Guided Edit mode makes photo editing accessible to complete novices, while the Quick Edit and Full Edit modes give users plenty of room to grow as their skills increase. With increased Raw support and the inclusion of Adobe Bridge, advanced amateur digital photographers and hobbyists will likely have all the photo-processing power they’ll ever need. If you’d like to learn image editing and start creating fun projects with your photos, you’re going to enjoy Photoshop Elements 6.0; it was designed for nonprofessionals, and it shows. Users of the previous version will also find that the significant number of new features makes upgrading worthwhile. In either case, Photoshop Elements 6.0 enables you to create imagery you never thought you could.