Adobe Photoshop Elements 15
Nice new features, but a costly option
$99.99 (Upgrade $79.99) Developer Adobe, adobe.com Requirements OS X 10.10 or later, 4GB RAM
Photoshop Elements’ challenge is not only to keep adding features that don’t step on the toes of its bigger Creative Cloud brother, but also to justify its very existence and price. After all, it’s only $20 cheaper than a year’s worth of a Creative Cloud subscription to both Photoshop and Lightroom. Front and center this year is Elements’
ability to “liquefy” shots of people. Faces are automatically recognized and features can be subtly tweaked: a mouth can be made a little smilier, or you can adjust the spacing between someone’s eyes or the height of their forehead. It’s certainly possible to accidentally achieve silly results, but by keeping the size of our adjustments under control we were pleasantly surprised at the subtle effectiveness of some of our changes.
Dehazing has also made its way down Adobe’s product line. This applies an intelligent contrast boost to images with atmospheric haze. In our experiments, landscapes showed the feature to its best effect, boosting contrast in hazy areas while leaving clear foregrounds untouched. A promising-sounding shake-reduction tool is also included, theoretically allowing photographs shot at too-slow shutter speeds to be salvaged. This also falls into the “surprisingly effective” category, although our tests showed the telltale haloes of over-enthusiastic sharpening.
Photoshop Elements’ Guided panel – a range of step-by-step edits – has gained new tricks, such as the Photo Text tool, which creates a block of text, masked off so that your background image assumes the shape of the words you type.
Elements’ Organizer – a cut-down version of Bridge – has also had an injection of new features: select a group of images and click Quick Fix and you’re able to batch process images with saturation, exposure, and clarity tools. Its search tool has also grown impressively: as Organizer rakes through your photo folders, it allows you to search not only by face or geolocation, but by the content of a photo. Enter “Taj Mahal,” for instance, and Organizer will return any shots of that landmark you have.
the bottom line. A reliable bit of software with some useful new features. Think carefully before choosing this over a Creative Cloud subscription, though.