RECOMMENDED

VERDICT: A new interface, smart albums, guided editing and photo merging but comparatively little to boost core efficiency.

Organizing and enhancing thousands of digital photographs is a time-consuming task and the digital camera owner needs dedicated help to make the process as productive and enjoyable as possible...

Key to this is the working environment and the biggest change to the latest version of the market-leading Photoshop Elements is a complete interface overhaul. Everything looks cleaner and more streamlined with a greater focus on your images. Most significant is the reworking of the side taskbar which now offers consistent centralized access to the program’s core functionality through four main tabs - Organize, Fix/Edit, Create and Share – that are shared between the program’s separate Organizer and Editor modules.
The Organizer module is Elements’ standout strength and has long set the standard for image management with advanced features such as version stacking, face tagging, location mapping, ad-hoc collections (now renamed “albums”) and camera raw support (enhanced again). The main introduction in this release is the “smart album” which automatically pulls out selections of images based on criteria that you specify. Simple examples include all photos taken in the last six months or shot with a certain camera, but you can also combine more advanced criteria to, for example, pull out all images rated four stars or above taken within one mile of a given location.

The Organizer benefits from the cleaner interface and new smart albums

The Organizer should also play an important role for quickly enhancing images and the range of editing commands it offers has been expanded and brought together under a new Fix tab. In practice however, the new corrections for colour, contrast and levels are purely automatic meaning that they either work or they don’t and the only hands-on control provided is cropping. The end result is that, for all but the simplest enhancements, you still have to load your images into the separate Editor module. At least the enhanced Photo Bin at the bottom of the Editor workspace now makes it easier to work through all those images currently selected in the Organizer or in a particular album.
In terms of editing power, the dedicated Quick Fix workspace’s slider-based control over lighting, colour and sharpness is largely unchanged but you can now retrospectively refine edges when working with selections made with the near-magical Quick Selection tool. There’s also a new alternative Guided Edit workspace which provides handholding and access to more advanced power for straightening images, removing colour casts, touching up scratches and correcting skin tones. Pulling out these core capabilities from the Full Edit mode is certainly a step forward in terms of usability but, rather than complicating things with another workspace, it would have been more efficient to merge these tools into the Quick Fix environment, or better still directly in the Organizer.

The new Guided Edit workspace is home to the new photomerging capabilities

It’s the new Guided Edit workspace that provides access to the standout feature in this latest release – photo merging. Whenever you take group photos it seems to be a law of nature that someone will have their eyes shut in each shot. Now, using the Photomerge command, Elements 6 automatically aligns multiple images so that you can combine the best elements from each - excellent. Also based on the same technology is the ability to photomerge faces – simply align markers on eyes and mouth in two images and then you can seamlessly paint say the nose from one to the other – “hilarious”. Back to the serious task of enhancing your images and the Full Edit workspace sees minor improvements to Elements’ excellent Healing and Clone Stamp tools and to the Brightness/Contrast and Convert to Black and White commands.
Far more fundamental is the overhaul of Photoshop Elements’ commands for creating photo-based projects such as albums, collages, CD cases and so on which have now been promoted to their own Create tab in both Organizer and Editor modules. Previously, when creating a photo album say, you’d call up a single simple dialog in which you’d specify size, layout, theme and number of pages. Now when you select the command a new taskbar-based wizard walks you through the process step-by-step, offering a wider range of themes and layouts to choose between and then providing access to a whole host of new drag-on content and styles. Whether this is an improvement or just making a meal of things is debatable.
A similar taskbar-based revamp has also been made of the various commands now handily pooled under the new Share tab. Here you can create advanced pan-and-zoom slideshows, burn CD and DVD presentations and email photos as attachments or as part of the message – regularly used email addresses and setups can also now be saved as presets. Most useful of all when it comes to getting your images seen is the ability to create, customise and upload online galleries – including some striking new Flash-based extravaganzas - especially as Adobe provides users with free hosting for 250 media items.
From initial camera download right through to final web upload Photoshop Elements 6 offers dedicated state-of-the-art photography power at a very good price. However I can’t help feeling that Adobe has got its priorities wrong with this release. When dealing with hundreds of images the focus needs to be on core productivity, but there’s little here to be gained on that front. While Elements retains its crown for in-depth photo management and editing, if you’re looking for simplicity and speed (and can put up with limited editing power) then you might well want to check out the integrated (and free) Google Picasa.

EASE OF USE 5/6
FEATURES 5/6
VALUE FOR MONEY 5/6
OVERALL 5/6