A First Look at Photoshop Elements 3
By Scott Kelby
Adobe has just released a major new update to Photoshop Elements, and I have to say Version 3 is a must-upgrade version if there ever was one. They've made sweeping changes to the way Elements works and they were able to pull off a mini-miracle by adding significantly more power, while actually making the product easier and more intuitive to use.
Here's a quick look at some of the coolest new features:
1. The new interface
Adobe has streamlined the interface in a big way, and perhaps most notably they designed Elements 3 to give you an unobstructed view of the photos you're editing by redesigning the workspace. They've come up with a thinner single row toolbar (shown here), and all your palettes are now docked on the far right side of the workspace, rather than floating in front of your photos. They also added a Photo Bin below your image area that gives you one-click access to all your open photos. Of course, you can always skip this new workspace and use the old method, but once you work in this new "Maximize" mode, you'll fall in love with it and my guess is, you won't switch back.
2 . Retouching tool of the gods
Elements 3 got a gift from its big brother (the full blown Photoshop CS) when it got the Healing Brush tool. It is a revolutionary tool for seamlessly removing wrinkles, blemishes, rips, tears, and other artifacts that need fixing. This one tool is worth the upgrade price alone, and you'll find a hundred different uses for your retouching and restoration projects.
3 . More powerful File Browser
Another feature in Elements 3 that came from Photoshop CS is the updated and significantly more powerful File Browser. It employs some of the most popular features from the CS version, including a resizable preview window, custom sizes for your thumbnails, and easier access to features from the Browser's own mini-menu. A big improvement over the previous version.
4 . Working with RAW digital photos
Elements 3 now supports the direct importing of digital camera photos taken in the high quality RAW format though a built-in Camera RAW plug-in (shown above), and you can also now work with 16-bit images directly within Elements (although the number of things you can do is limited, just like Photoshop 7's support for 16-bit images). The Camera RAW plug-in enables you to do the processing of your RAW digital negative to create your own custom prints, and you can control everything from the white balance to the color tint. This is a big feature for serious photographers who demand the highest quality and flexibility.
5 . Improved quick Fix
This is one area Adobe really added some muscle to, and it may be the program's "most improved" feature with an easier-to-use layout, better (and larger) previews, plus the introduction of one-click "auto fixes" that do most of the work for you, while still giving you some control with simple sliders.
6 . More than just prints
One of the features that I predict will be among the biggest hits with Elements users is the new Creation feature, which lets you take your photos and turn them into projects, including full-blown slide shows (with titles, background music, transitions, etc.), or even Wall Calendars (as shown above), with Elements doing all the hard work for you by auto-dating the calendars to your specs. Elements 3 ships with a number of different professionally designed calendar templates and the entire interface makes it so simple, a child could create professional looking calendars. Although the Creation feature has a very "consumer-like" look and feel, it is very easy to use and it's hard to deny the results, which look great.
7 . Create your own Photo Albums
This is another part of the Creation Feature we talked about earlier, and it lets you create custom album pages using your photos. It lets you choose from a number of pre-designed templates, including templates for digital scrapbooking, and most are pretty nicely designed.
8 . Fixing photos you would have thrown away
Again, Elements 3 gets a powerful tool from Photoshop CS, and this one is absolutely one of the favorite tools for photographers using CS. It's called "Shadow/Highlight" and it lets you fix photos where the subject is in shadows (photos you normally would have thrown away) with just a simple slider. The captures above show how the tool works--you just open it, and simply by opening it, it opens the shadow areas,and just the shadow areas, by 50%. To open the shadows further, you simply move the slider to the right. This new tool also lets you pull back highlights that are blown out in a similar way.
9 . Comparing photos full screen
If you ever wanted to compare similar photos side-by-side, you're in luck, because this is another area that's really been done right. It lets you put two photos side-by-side at full size, then you just click on the one you want to keep. Then hit the button and another photo appears for you to compare to your "keeper." This makes finding the right photo easier than ever.
10 . Organizing your photos
Perhaps the most visible improvement to Elements (besides the new interface), is the addition of a new Organizer for sorting and managing your photos (although this feature is only in the Windows version of Elements--not the Mac version). What Adobe has done is basically take their stand-alone product known as "Photoshop Album" and incorporated an updated version of it into Elements 3. So now you've got the File Browser (for working with images right from your camera), and the Organizer (for managing all your digital images). The Organizer is great for doing just that--getting organized--and it uses Album's now-famous drag and drop "tags" for helping you quickly find the photos you're looking for. This is a fairly feature-rich product, so much so that I had to include an entire chapter in my new Elements 3 book just on using the Organizer. It's so feature-rich, that I believe in future versions of Elements, you'll see the File Browser go away, because the Organizer does a much better job of most photo management tasks.
OVERVIEW
This is a much-improved version of an already amazing product, and if you're a serious, or even semi-serious user of Elements, you'll definitely want to upgrade because it just offers so much in so many areas. The downside of all this is that Mac users get a little bit shafted on this release because some of the cool new features in Elements 3 (like the Organizer) didn't make their way into the Mac version. |
