Adobe unveils Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac

[AppleInsider]

Ahead of next week's Macworld Expo, Adobe announced that its long-awaited Photoshop Elements 6 software for the Mac is now available for pre-order through the company's website.

The new version includes features based on Adobe's proprietary Photomerge technology, which lets users easily combine the best facial expressions and body language from a series of shots to create a single, ideal group shot.

A new Quick Selection Tool aims to reduce a once time-consuming select-and-adjust task to a single click, and photographers can choose from one of three edit modes, each geared toward a different experience level.

The software also features a Guided Edit mode that helps walk users through the steps of improving a photo. Additional enhancements include an improved conversion tool that dramatically converts color images into elegant, nuanced black-and-whites.

"In this release, we’ve focused on going beyond the basics to make everyday and advanced tasks even easier to achieve," said John Loiacono, senior vice president of Creative Solutions at Adobe. "Photoshop Elements 6 for Macintosh allows people to organize and find photos quickly, unleash powerful editing tricks without any heavy lifting, and creatively share photos that give them all the bragging rights.”

Similar to Apple's iPhoto application, Photoshop Elements 6 software will also offer customizable layouts that let users create scrapbook pages, photo books, greeting cards and burn to CD/DVD for high impact sharing which requires no previous experience. Additional sharing options include ordering prints, creating personal online albums for sharing photo creations on the web, printing photos into real U.S. postage stamps, and showcasing creations on a CEIVA Digital Photo Frame.



Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac will run on Leopard, (Mac OS X v 10.5), as well as previous versions of Mac OS X starting with 10.4.8., and is immediately available for pre-order for an estimated street price of US$89.99.

Adobe, which says it plans to ship the software in the second quarter of the year, will show off many of the product's new features at next week's Macworld Expo in San Francisco (Booth #S1302)

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[SpamSandwich]

Photoshop Elements has a veeeeery cool feature called "Photo Merge". Just watched the video... really smart. I'd like to see how it handles shots with more complex backgrounds.

[tacojohn]

Elements is a really great program for beginners and people looking to get into the Photoshop world– I just hope they haven't changed the interface much between Elements and CS3.

When I was in high school I got a copy of Elements and started using that before I jumped into full Photoshop– it was a great first step because the interfaces were very similar.

[machei]

Let me toss this out to the room:

I have Aperture and love it. In your opinion, do you think that Elements is good enough to handle the graphics mods in photographs that Aperture doesn't? For instance, it'll do layering and cloning and all that stuff. For a photographer, is it enough? I have people telling me I NEED full Photoshop, but I've never been able to justify the price.

[a_greer]

Originally Posted by machei

Let me toss this out to the room:

I have Aperture and love it. In your opinion, do you think that Elements is good enough to handle the graphics mods in photographs that Aperture doesn't? For instance, it'll do layering and cloning and all that stuff. For a photographer, is it enough? I have people telling me I NEED full Photoshop, but I've never been able to justify the price.

Everyone will have a differant oppinion on that for photogs, I say if you are a serious pro photographer who makes a decent living at it, PS and maybe a seminar on how to use it would be a good investment in your business, if you are doing it as a second job, or part time or something, Elements may be OK.

The best way to learn what you need is to download the trial versions, if elements does what you want then great, and if not, you know before shelling out the $$.

[Marvin]

Originally Posted by machei

I have people telling me I NEED full Photoshop, but I've never been able to justify the price.

The biggest thing is probably lack of CMYK support, which is necessary if you do print work. I think Adobe just stripped out the most essential parts that you'd need for certain lines of work. If you don't use those things, Elements should be fine. I personally work in RGB - Final Cut and Shake etc don't support CMYK. However the designers I work with use Illustrator and Indesign for print output and they use CMYK all the time. You could of course work in RGB and convert it externally but it's more hassle.

From what I can see, Adobe do the same thing as Apple with their laptops. The Macbook Pro has a good GPU, a bigger screen etc but they charge twice the price because it's a 'pro' machine. More recently, they have made the gap wide enough to justify the cost but the gap doesn't need to exist at all.

All Adobe had to do was get rid of a handful of things in the full Photoshop like CMYK and a few others and people who use those features all the time simply have no choice but to pay much more.

I have to say that the price of Elements is seriously cheap though. I don't recall it being this cheap before. Why would you buy Pixelmator when this is almost the same and has custom brushes and plugins? It's a shame it took so damn long though. This is what two years after the Intel switch and this is the first native Elements program and it's not out until the end of March. Appalling.

[backtomac]

Originally Posted by Marvin

The biggest thing is probably lack of CMYK support, which is necessary if you do print work. I think Adobe just stripped out the most essential parts that you'd need for certain lines of work. If you don't use those things, Elements should be fine. I personally work in RGB - Final Cut and Shake etc don't support CMYK. However the designers I work with use Illustrator and Indesign for print output and they use CMYK all the time. You could of course work in RGB and convert it externally but it's more hassle.

From what I can see, Adobe do the same thing as Apple with their laptops. The Macbook Pro has a good GPU, a bigger screen etc but they charge twice the price because it's a 'pro' machine. More recently, they have made the gap wide enough to justify the cost but the gap doesn't need to exist at all.

All Adobe had to do was get rid of a handful of things in the full Photoshop like CMYK and a few others and people who use those features all the time simply have no choice but to pay much more.

I have to say that the price of Elements is seriously cheap though. I don't recall it being this cheap before. Why would you buy Pixelmator when this is almost the same and has custom brushes and plugins? It's a shame it took so damn long though. This is what two years after the Intel switch and this is the first native Elements program and it's not out until the end of March. Appalling.

I've elements on a pc and I like it a lot. I've gotten used to iPhoto and it's great for most of my needs but I must admit that the new element looks very appealing and I may ad it to my app collection.

[Spunkmeyer]

Adobe doesn't seem to mention if it is a Universal Binary or not... you'd think if it was, they'd tout that as a major feature. So, one should probably assume that it isn't... which means I for one won't be buying it.

[nagromme]

Universal Binary isn't big news anymore. The Intel change is long over. I wouldn't worry too much that a major new consumer product release in 2008, from a major company, is going to lack support for every Mac that has shipped in over a year. Nor support for PPC before that. (And for graphics, support does imply performance.) UB is a minor bullet point these days--I'm sure it's the case even if not mentioned.

[palter]

Originally Posted by nagromme

Universal Binary isn't big news anymore. The Intel change is long over. I wouldn't worry too much that a major new consumer product release in 2008, from a major company, is going to lack support for every Mac that has shipped in over a year. Nor support for PPC before that. (And for graphics, support does imply performance.) UB is a minor bullet point these days--I'm sure it's the case even if not mentioned.

I'd feel more confident of that if the datasheet had the "Universal" badge on it in addition to the Mac and "Works with iPhoto" badges.

[jlandd]

Originally Posted by Marvin

I have to say that the price of Elements is seriously cheap though. I don't recall it being this cheap before. Why would you buy Pixelmator when this is almost the same and has custom brushes and plugins?

And correct me if this isn't the case, but isn't Elements the only app anywhere near the price range that allows editing of 16 bit TIIFs? Any program I've tried short of PS (especially all the ones based on Core Image yanks them down to 8 as soon as you do anything to them, and who knows by what means they're doing it.

I don't understand why a non-professional who shoots RAW would settle for manipulating in 8 bit.

[Bruce Young]

Originally Posted by Marvin

... have to say that the price of Elements is seriously cheap though. I don't recall it being this cheap before. ...

The Photoshop Elements has always been around $90 or so, not much more (if any more at all).

Amazon currently lists PSE 4 Mac as SRP $89.99 and their discount price at $79.99.
Adobe (apparently just recently, since PSE 6 announced) has lowered the SRP of PSE 4 to $79.99
And I am trying to remember what I paid for PSE 3 Mac back in 2004 or 5, and I am thinking it was around $80 or so.
(I skipped the v4 'upgrade')

So I think (if memory serves) the pricing is pretty much in the same ballpark as it always has been

[houseley]

Originally Posted by jlandd

And correct me if this isn't the case, but isn't Elements the only app anywhere near the price range that allows editing of 16 bit TIIFs?

<snip>

I don't understand why a non-professional who shoots RAW would settle for manipulating in 8 bit.

PSE4 will allow some editing in 16 bit but you have to revert to 8 bit for many steps. To that extent I have found Elements a disappointment and of little use to me. I don't like the interface either (I much prefer the control points and simplicity of Capture NX) and don't need CS3 nor can I afford it.

Unless PSE6 allows 16 bit editing throughout, I shall be passing on it.

[tonton]

Originally Posted by houseley

PSE4 will allow some editing in 16 bit but you have to revert to 8 bit for many steps. To that extent I have found Elements a disappointment and of little use to me. I don't like the interface either (I much prefer the control points and simplicity of Capture NX) and don't need CS3 nor can I afford it.

Unless PSE6 allows 16 bit editing throughout, I shall be passing on it.

Not even Photoshop CS3 allows 16 bit editing throughout if you count the use of most filters.

[palter]

Now that MacWorld is underway and Adobe is supposed to be showing off Elements 6 there, has anyone been able to verify whether or not it's universal?