Adobe Photoshop elements 2018
£85.56/$79.99
a beginner interface with a great deal of power
This is the ‘amateur’ version of Photoshop, with a simplified, family-orientated interface and an emphasis on beginners and novices, but there’s lots here for enthusiasts as well.
Photoshop Elements 2018 is actually two programs, rather than one. It consists of the Elements Organizer and the Elements Editor, which do work together but can also work as standalone programs.
The Organizer can browse your photos folder by folder, but also offers albums for bringing your photos together ‘virtually’ and some good search tools. You can add tags (keywords) in the normal way, but it also offers Smart Tags, which identify common subjects automatically.
From the Organizer, you can open images in the Editor, which has an elive mode for inspiration and tutorials, a Quick mode for fast and simple effects, a Guided mode with an ever-expanding list of effects walkthroughs, and an Expert mode with plenty of tools.
Performance
The Organizer and the Editor are both modern-looking, clear and friendly, and between them they make Photoshop Elements 2018 superb value. But enthusiasts may be disappointed by the cut-down version of Adobe Camera Raw that comes with it, which only has a small subset of the tools provided in the Photoshop version and does not come with lens correction profiles or chromatic aberration removal. Many of the preset and Guided effects are quite crude, and even in Expert mode the range of adjustments is limited compared to Photoshop – you don’t get Curves, for example. Nevertheless, Elements 2018 is good value, simple and friendly.