Friday, September 28, 2007
Adobe Releases Photoshop Elements 6 and Premiere Elements 4
Posted by Jason Dunn in "SOFTWARE" @ 09:11 PM
"Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced two major upgrades to its digital photo and video software for consumers: Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 6 for Windows® & Adobe Premiere® Elements 4 for Windows. Tight integration and a shared Organizer, with a common database accessible from either application, allow users to do more with their photos and videos. Available separately or together in a single retail package, Photoshop Elements & Adobe Premiere Elements software give photo and video enthusiasts more creative ways to organize, edit, create and share digital photos and home movies."
I feel that Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements are among the most underrated applications out there today. Especially Photoshop Elements, which is extremely powerful and can do almost everything an average user needs, without the extreme price of Photoshop CS3. Both applications are tied to the same release cycle, so they get updated pretty much on a yearly basis with new features.
Photoshop Elements 6 has a bunch of new features, the most interesting of which is Photomerge®, which claims to be able to take the best facial expressions from different photos and combine them into one image. I've seen something similar to this from Microsoft research, but as is sadly typical, Microsoft comes up with a great idea and never manages to bring it to market. If Photomerge works as well as the marketing materials say it does, this will be a big deal - especially for those with children, who never seem to make the same face twice.
Premiere Elements 4 continues to evolve, now offering a direct-to-YouTube upload feature, which also claims to support "other social networking sites" (I suspect Facebook and MySpace are included). They also seem to have included muvee-like functionality with the ability to "apply event- or style-based movie themes to turn a sequence of scenes into a polished movie in just a few clicks". We'll see what that turns out like - so far I've never seen any program that can do what muvee does.
I was pleased to see that they were offering an upgrade for instant download, available even to myself in Canada, but imagine my surprise when I purchased it and discovered that I couldn't download it until October 8th! So I'll have to wait to see what I think of it...
I feel that Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements are among the most underrated applications out there today. Especially Photoshop Elements, which is extremely powerful and can do almost everything an average user needs, without the extreme price of Photoshop CS3. Both applications are tied to the same release cycle, so they get updated pretty much on a yearly basis with new features.
Photoshop Elements 6 has a bunch of new features, the most interesting of which is Photomerge®, which claims to be able to take the best facial expressions from different photos and combine them into one image. I've seen something similar to this from Microsoft research, but as is sadly typical, Microsoft comes up with a great idea and never manages to bring it to market. If Photomerge works as well as the marketing materials say it does, this will be a big deal - especially for those with children, who never seem to make the same face twice.
Premiere Elements 4 continues to evolve, now offering a direct-to-YouTube upload feature, which also claims to support "other social networking sites" (I suspect Facebook and MySpace are included). They also seem to have included muvee-like functionality with the ability to "apply event- or style-based movie themes to turn a sequence of scenes into a polished movie in just a few clicks". We'll see what that turns out like - so far I've never seen any program that can do what muvee does.
I was pleased to see that they were offering an upgrade for instant download, available even to myself in Canada, but imagine my surprise when I purchased it and discovered that I couldn't download it until October 8th! So I'll have to wait to see what I think of it...
