Apple Mac
Organise, enhance and share your shots more quickly with help from AI tools.
$145.19 | ADOBE.COM/AU | NEEDS MACOS 10.13 OR LATER
Although Photoshop Elements is considered a cut-down version of Photoshop CC, it is perfect for your creative photo-editing needs. With the release of Photoshop Elements 2020, Adobe continues to cater for our need to edit and share shots quickly and with the minimum of effort. For example, the home screen’s new Auto Creations feature applies a range of creative effects to a selection of shots. Some of the Auto Creation effects are fairly cheesy, like a background filled with star shapes.
A more useful and attractive auto effect is a background blur which simulates the shallow depth of field effect produced by DSLR cameras. This post-production blur is similar to that produced by the Portrait mode in high end iPhone models. You can leave the home screen’s automatically applied effects just as they are or manually fine-tune them in the Elements Editor to create something more personal and effective.
One of Elements 2020’s hyped new features is one-click selection. Instead of scribbling the Quick Selection brush over a person to select them, you can now choose Select > Subject from the main menu. Photoshop Elements uses Adobe Sensei AI technology to analyse the shot for the most prominent subject, which it then automatically selects with a marquee. It does a reasonable job of selecting a single person or even a family group, but if there’s a larger, more scattered crowd then you’ll get a message saying that it can’t find a prominent subject to select. You can also access a one-click Select Subject button when using the Replace Background Guided Edit.
As well as the ‘Add to’ and ‘Subtract from’ selection brush options, there’s a useful new Push Selection icon that helps you reposition and soften the selection around the edges of your subject. You can then import a new background and click a button to make the isolated subject’s colours and tones match those in the background to create a more convincing composite.
Removing unwanted people from a photo’s background is something most of us will need to do at some stage, so it’s good to see that the Guided Edit workspace now boasts a new Object Removal guide. By simply drawing a box around a person photo-bombing your holiday snap, the Auto Select tool does an effective job of selecting their outline. You can then click the Remove Object button to fill the section with adjacent pixels that hide the subject. This auto-selected patch of pixels doesn’t always work perfectly, but you can use Clone Stamp or Spot Healing brush to tidy up the initial AI edit. It’s also a useful tool for quickly removing ugly bits of street furniture such as street lights or dangling power cables.
Given the popularity of posting portraits online there’s a useful new tool to help flatter your subject. The Enhance > Smooth Skin command reduces the appearance of blemishes and wrinkles without the need to retouch the shot manually. It manages to blur the skin without altering key features such as the eyes or mouth. You can use a slider to dial down the skin-softening effect for a more natural look.
You can also give old black and white photos a new lease of life thanks to the clever Enhance > Colorise Photo command. After the AI operation has decided what colours to add, you can use a new Droplet tool to manually fine-tune specific areas in the colourised version of the shot.