by Adobe has spread the coveted Photoshop name to a number of different products across multiple platforms. Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 borrows high-end features from its namesake, making them easier than ever to actually use.
Unlike Apple’s own consumer-centric iPhoto, which hasn’t received significant new features in three years, Photoshop Elements 12 is bursting at the seams with further tools and enhancements to spruce up any digital photo and share it with ease—a task that can now be done completely from the Elements Editor, for example.
Catering to the Instagram crowd, Adobe has added a variety of one-touch effects, textures, and frames.
The biggest addition is integration with Adobe Revel, which allows users to store photos and now even videos to the cloud. While the free version is limited to only 50 uploads per month, a premium subscription ($59.99/year or $5.99/month) allows unlimited imports, making the dream of a cloud-hosted photo library a reality.
Unfortunately, the way Photoshop Elements has implemented Revel leaves some room for improvement. Revel customers already using the Mac App Store client will find their cached content downloaded a second time upon syncing their account with Elements 12. In our case, that meant doubling a nearly 6GB library of thumbnails for more than 15,000 images in two different places.
While Photoshop Elements 12 clearly offers a better environment for editing Revel-hosted images, doing so requires saving an additional, full-resolution version on your Mac’s hard drive, which an always-running Revel Agent then silently uploads to the cloud in the background. Elements intelligently consolidates original and edited images while viewing but, at least for now, Revel for Mac clutters its library by displaying them side by side.
Other new features are better executed, like automated Quick mode for adding one-click effects, textures, and frames (think Instagram), as well as the most welcome tool to date for those of us with four-legged friends. “Pet Eye” effect is exactly what you think it is: the canine or feline equivalent to removing red eye from our furry companions’ eyeballs on photos where a flash is used. No more glowing “pets from hell” look!
Photoshop Elements 12’s Guided Edit mode has been spruced up with more than 25 step-by-step techniques that make short work of complicated digital trickery and help users learn new techniques. This comes in especially handy for the Restore Old Photo option, which can be used to clean up tears and scratches, remove dust, and correct color.
Photoshop Elements 12 introduces Content Aware Move, a pro-level trick borrowed from Photoshop, allowing users to move an object and automatically heal the space left behind. This feature has been the highlight of low-cost competitors such as Snapheal for some time, so it’s nice to see Adobe finally catching up to its rivals.
The bottom line. Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 is loaded with new features that continue to be well worth the money for iPhoto defectors.
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