I’ve been using Photoshop Elements 8 for about a month now.
While there are no huge changes here, there are quite a few updates that just might make this product upgrade-worthy for you.
Mac Users
First, a note for you Mac users. You can upgrade to PSE 8 along with everyone else now. It’s about time, right?
PSE 8 and Actions
All the actions I have tested in PSE 8 work just fine. And installing them is the same as installing in PSE 8 – no different, no more complicated, no easier. Are you listening, Adobe?
Why the PSE 8 Organizer is Miraculous
The Photoshop Elements 8 Organizer learns to recognize and name the people that matter most in your life. Seriously!
PSE will find your images with faces. Choose a person to introduce PSE to, like your DH. Select a few pictures of him, tell PSE that these pix are all of DH, and PSE will find all the other images in your collection with his face and ask you if you’d like to tag them all with his name.
How cool is that?
And, it doesn’t matter if you’ve known your husband since you were kids, either. When I attended the Elements pre-release press conference, the host demonstrated that PSE could recognize his kids from the time they were tweens to just about full grown.
Click on these screen shots for a bigger view:
Find Images Easily with the Keyword Cloud
Once you’ve tagged your images, the PSE 8 Organizer makes it easier to go back and find what you’re looking for using a blog-style keyword cloud.
What about the PSE 8 Editor?
There is one interface upgrade in PSE 8 that I love. Those of you who have used CS4 will recognize it. With PSE 7, I was always playing musical pallets. First I need my layers palette, then my Undo History, and lord knows when I’m using actions my effects palette is so huge that it takes up the entire palettes bin!
With PSE 8, you can now collapse your various palettes into tabs, so that it will just take you one click to see everything you need. Do you see under my Effects Palette the tabs for Adjustments/Undo History/Layers? That makes PSE life much simpler.
You can put all your open images into tabs as well. Get rid of that space consuming Project Bin and move between your pix easily! See how I’m working on “Untitled 1″ but can hop over to Pixel Fairy Princess with just a click?
New Editor Features that Make You Look Like a Professional Photographer
Exposure Merge
You know the shots. If you expose for the background, the faces are too dark to be worth anything. If you expose for the faces, you miss out on the stunning background, be it a sunset, city line, whatever.
PSE 8 solves that problem. Take one shot where the faces are exposed properly, and another where the background is exposed as you like it. Or, try shooting in RAW, expose for the faces, and see if you can’t fix the background in Raw.
Regardless, take the two images and and pick and choose the areas of proper exposure that you’d like to combine into one perfect and compliment-inspiring image!
Recompose
Stand closer. No, closer. Really Close. Why is it that people just don’t want to get close enough together to make a great image? PSE 8’s new Recompose feature can help with that. (It’s hiding under the crop button, by the way.)
Use the Red recompose brush to mark the areas you want to get rid of, then use the sizing boxes on the side to squish your image. The faces or focal points don’t get distorted, but you lose all the unnecessary parts of your image. Click on this screen shot to see how it works:
And here is a quick before and after that I did to get rid of the space and tree between the buildings:
Chicks Executive Summary – Who Should Upgrade
- If you have PSE 5 or prior – holy cow, are you kidding me? Upgrade already!
- If you have PSE 6 or 7 - are you an upgrade junkie? I am. And the tagging, Palette tabs, Exposure Merge and Recompose totally make this upgrade worthwhile for those of us who can’t live without the latest gadgets and toys.
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
While I thought the face-finding portion of this was going to be invaluable, I didn’t find it all that helpful. Maybe I’m doing it wrong, but it wasn’t pulling faces out like I had expected after using Picasa (which, BTW, finds faces from the CROWD at a football game…a little overkill there). I find tagging the faces that PSE8 doesn’t find a little tedious. I usually view my photos at almost full screen and I have to click, make the box around the face, then tag the face. Has anyone else figured out a better way to tag the ones that aren’t recognized in PSE?
Hi Dani,
Do you start the People Reconition tool from within the keyword tags panel? I haven’t had any problems with the tool not picking out faces – it did pick out a few items that weren’t faces, however.
Erin
I have PSElements 6, and I’m ashamed to say that all I know how to do is place my logo on my pictures. Honestly, I am almost certain I’m even doing that the hard way. No upgrading here until I find someone else with Mac that is willing to give me some lessons, LOL!!!!
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Since the Mac version comes with Bridge instead of Organizer, are we Apple-fans left out of this facial recognition awesomeness?
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Jennifer, unfortunately, I believe you are right. Nothing I’ve read about Bridge shipping with PSE 8 for Mac mentions the facial recognition.
Teehee, PSE 3er right here, so holy cow is right. Luckily I think Santa got the message and a copy of version 8 will find itself under our tree.
Ohmigosh are you serious? PSE 3. I’ve never even seen that product! Wow. You will be amazed.
Thanks a lot. I’m on Elements 7 and wasn’t going to upgrade. Now…
Well thanks anyway.
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I wasn’t planning on upgrading since I haven’t even “mastered” pse 6 yet…but that last b&a shot for Recompose really got my attention! There are sooo many times I’ve wanted to do that but not quite confident of my editing abilities…would be awesome to let pse do the work for me:)
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I love the idea of recompose!
I have PSE5. Wanted 7, but never got around to upgrading, now hoping Santa checks the wish list before he goes shopping.
I find tagging the faces that PSE8 doesn’t find a little tedious.
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Tedious is the perfect description for tagging the ones that it doesn’t find. I agree.
I started with 4, upgraded to 6…then 7 which I used about 3 times and then just HAD to have 8! I’m one of those upgrade junkies and gadget queens you were talking about…
Thanks for the tutorial on installing actions. That was very helpful!