Chapter 1: Photoshop Elements Features Overview
Adobe Photoshop Elements is a pixel-based graphics photo-editing application that was first released in 2001. Its appearance followed on from an entry-level program called Photoshop LE, a light edition of Photoshop, which was a product made available mostly for students and teachers, and sometimes bundled with other hardware products at the point of sale. If you count its LE predecessor, Photoshop Elements 2020 is now in its twentieth version.
Initially, Photoshop Elements was released as a basic, entry-level tool for the consumer; mums and dads trying to get their collective heads around digital technology. But over the years, it has dramatically expanded its feature set, inheriting many significant professional-level tools from its more complex sibling, Adobe Photoshop.
So, how different is Elements from Photoshop? Interestingly, Adobe maintains that the principal difference between the two is that Elements is still essentially a screen-based, RGB (Red, Green and Blue) program, whereas Photoshop CC is designed to convert RGB files for work in the commercial CMYK print spaceāmaking it the go-to graphics application for all professionals working in print.
However, the market has changed significantly in the past 15 years, with so many more businesses trading online; therefore, the demand for print-ready conversions has reduced significantly. In my own experience, I have found that any good commercial print shop will gladly convert Elements' RGB files to its preferred CMYK color space, usually with only a nominal prepress charge, thus enabling everything produced out of Elements to be commercially printed to the highest degree of quality.
In this version, you'll find an astonishing range of sophisticated tools, features, and capabilities packed into a very affordable editing package, making it not only a serious professional tool but also one that is simpler to use than Photoshop CC.
As you will quickly come to appreciate, this software is, in fact, made up of two separate applications and a number of different modes designed to address different user experience levels, all rolled into one bundle called Elements. Although it has technically evolved from other products, such as Adobe Photoshop LE and Photoshop Album, it's now an incredibly powerful and cohesive standalone tool designed for transforming photographic images, while remaining both affordable and fairly easy to use.
What's important to understand is that it's not necessary to know everything about this application to succeed at producing beautiful resultsāyou can use just one, or a combination, of its components to produce impressive edits, depending on your experience, creativity, and, indeed, your drive for editing perfection.
Because Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020 is made up of several quite different parts, treat this first chapter very much as a general overview. Once you better understand what each section offers, you'll find it significantly easier to navigate the various features, which, in turn, will enable you to produce great results more efficiently.
What you will see in this first section:
- New features in Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020
- Importing files and the Organizer
- Storing your edit information in the Catalog
- Editing modes, including the Quick Edit, Guided Edit, and Expert Edit modes
- The Create and Share menus explained
- Working with video and Premiere Elements
- Working with Panels, the Panel Bin, and Panel functionality
What's new in Elements 2020?
Although recent updates in the last couple of versions have appeared to be little more than stability and reliance fixes, Adobe has pushed ahead by interlacing its artificial intelligence technology (AI) with a range of automated featuresāmaking complex and time-consuming processes easier, quicker, and more reliable.
I'd be the first to suggest that such technology would, at best, be fraught with errors, but this new version proves me wrong. Its new AI-driven automated featuresānotably, tools for Colorizing black and white images, Skin Smoothing and Object Removal, and Subject Selectionāare remarkably effective and pretty much do what Adobe claims them to be capable of, that is, to colorize black and white images with a single click, select and remove objects automatically, smooth skin tones flatteringly, and instantly isolate your subjects from busy backgrounds without the usual time-consuming selection tool process:
And while the success of these new AI-driven features does rely, to an extent, on the content of the images in question, I find that even if the result is not entirely as expected, the effect created is invariably something very desirable.
As with most new features introduced in the 2020 version, if the AI-generated version does not turn out as you'd hoped, you can apply the effect manually with greater controlābut that takes more experience. That said, in the example of this classic Hollywood image, I think the automated results (the three color versions to the left of the main image) are as good as the manually created, and more time-consuming, version seen on the right-hand side.
Users might also note that the application is now compatible with HEIF and HEVC (photo and video) files, further streamlining performance, especially when using files sourced from Apple iPhones.
The Home screen
What was referred to in Adobe Photoshop Elements 2018 as the eLive screen is now the Home screen. It's the first thing you see when Elements starts and, like its predecessor, is there to provide users with creative inspiration on how to edit images, embark on creative projects, and how to best use its many Auto Creations (circled in red). You can use it for learning how to accomplish basic editing tasks and for fun activities such as creating YouTube memes, automated slideshows, movies, and more, simply by clicking any of the pictorial links on the Home screenāwhich then take you to an online tutorial hosted by Adobe.
The screen displays a short (text) list of previously opened files, which is a nice feature, plus shortcuts to open the photo editor, the media browser (called the Organizer), and the video editor, plus links to Adobe, Facebook, and Twitter:
As you can see, this is the new Elements 2020 Home screen. You can use it as a source of creative inspiration, but also as the go-to screen to open previously edited files or to start one of the application links: Organizer, Photo Editor, or Video Editor.
It's important to note that if you've not bought Elements and Premiere Elements together as a bundle, clicking the third icon, Video Editor, will prompt you to download and 'try' Premiere Elements. Buying the bundle saves a fair chunk of money and makes sense because so many of us shoot video and stills.
If you are already using Premiere Elements 2020, you will notice several new features, including Smart Tags to help organization, simplified noise reduction, a sky replacement tool, and more. But those are topics for another book...
Photoshop Elements users will note that there are now more Auto Creations that appear on the lower left-hand side of the screen. These include the Pattern Brush, Black and White Selection, Depth of ...
