Skills in digital photo processing or video editing don’t come easily for some, with lots of experience often required, or time spent in school, but Adobe is hoping to make these skills easier to come by with new versions of its Elements software.
Long considered the “easy” editions of Photoshop and Premiere, Adobe’s Elements products are about get an update to help improve the look of your Facebook page, make monochrome photos look a little more interesting, and give home movies a similar look to movies with a touch more money behind them.
They’re just some of the improvements Adobe is throwing into the latest version of its Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements products, now in version 13.
“Our customers don’t always have the time or the know-how to get the results they desire,” said Adobe’s Shanmugh Natarajan. “In Photoshop Elements 13 and Premiere Elements 13, we focused on developing tools that automate the process or guide customers through the steps to create the photos they’ll love and want to share.”
Some of these tools include the ability to merge images by moving people and objects from one photo to the other in Photoshop’s “Photomerge Compose,” with “Match Colour tone” changing the lighting and shading between the images to make it appear as if the one estranged element was shot that way.
That could mean photos with friends, or fake photos with celebrities, and we’re sure this will inspire people to come up with some interesting photo merges that would normally require more skills than just a few stray clicks here and there.
Black and white photos will also be given some more fine-tuning, with Adobe adding splashes of colour to the program, in case you like those images that are all monochrome images of people but with a splash of red for the lips, or a splash of blue for the eyes.
Even Facebook gets a turn here, with cover photos easily edited and uploaded from Photoshop Elements.
We’re told video will also get a little easier to edit, but only if you end up grabbing Premiere Elements, since Photoshop is for photos and Premiere is for videos.
On the video side, though, there’s video stabilisation to make shaky cameras less shaky, more title options, and some simple templates for specific events — like a wedding — to get videos out quickly and easily.
Across both, there is now support for Retina and High DPI screens, so if you love your shiny Retina MacBook Pro or a PC laptop with a screen resolution bigger than Full HD — and these are slowly coming onto market — you’ll see the images better, as well as the menu and toolbars, with less blur or pixelation.
As usual, Adobe is keeping the price under $200, with $199 netting both Photoshop Elements 13 and Premiere Elements 13 in a bundle, while individual pricing comes to $129 per program. Mac and Windows are both supported, though, so unless you live and breathe Linux, chances are you’ll be covered if you’re interested in trying out the packages.
