Adobe Photoshop Elements 5

Author's product rating:   

Instructions / Help	Excellent
Ease of use	Easy
Ease of Installation	Good - quick to install
Value For Money	Good

Advantages:	Packed full of features, Great fun, Improve your digital images
Disadvantages:	You need memory !  !

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

~~~~ Overview ~~~~
Adobe Photoshop Elements 5 is a software package used to manipulate and enhance digital images, whether they are from your digital camera, scanned images or pictures from the internet. I mainly use the software to improve the pictures I take with my digital camera; altering the contrast, brightness, colour saturation etc, and also cropping and enlarging images. I also regularly alter pictures for documents and other applications, to make them smaller by compressing the images so they don't take as much disk space up.

The program is split into two main functions:
~ Editor: Allows photos and images to be enhanced and edited using a range of different tools.
~ Organiser: Allows your photos and images to be organised using several different methods.

~~~~ Editor ~~~~
The editor is very versatile, offering a whole variety of different tools and functions.
This section of the program runs when Adobe Photoshop is opened and is split into two main functions,
~ Quick Fix
~ Full Edit

The Quick Fix mode is very useful for users who are not confident with using the Photoshop software. It only permits the control of certain key functions, including:
~ Red eye fix: Removes unwanted evil red eyes from a photo.
~ Levels: Adjust the light levels in the photo.
~ Contrast: Adjust the contrast levels in the photo, including lighten shadows, darken highlights and mid-tone contrast.
~ Colour: Adjust the colour levels of the photo, including saturation, hue, temperature and tint.
~ Sharpen: Adjust the sharpness of the photo.

All these functions can be operated manually or automatically (if you're not too confident in adjusting the photos yourself). I only really use the Quick Fix mode to speedily adjust images, it is helpful as all the tools you need are displayed on one screen, however other than for a simple touch up I use the Full Edit mode.

The Full Edit mode allows access to all the Photoshop functions, its packed so full of different features and tools it is near impossible to talk about them all!!! Here are some of the main tools and features I use in the Full Edit Mode:

All the simple picture tools are shown on the left hand side of the screen in a panel, they include, Move tool, Zoom tool, Hand tool, Eyedropper tool, Regular marquee tool, Lasso tool, Magic wand tool, Text, Crop, Straighten tool, Red-eye removal tool, Spot healing brush, Clone stamp tool, Eraser, Brush, Paint bucket tool, Gradient tool, Blur tool and sponge tool. The use of these tools obviously depends on what you want to achieve, however, they are the most important tools as you will more than likely end up using them all at least once eventually.
Probably the most useful function out of this lot and the one I use the most, is the Spot Healing Brush. It basically does what it says, "heals" the image. If for example there were specs of dust or scratches on your camera lens, this tool can be used to clear these imperfections from the photo. It can also be used to clear any unwanted subject from your image, like a small fly on a flower close up. The Spot Healing Brush is one the most effective tools in Photoshop without being complicated or difficult to use.

The other functions are all contained in the top drop down menus. The three main ones I use are Image, Enhance and Filter.
The Image menu is used to adjust either the Image size, for example the dpi (dots per inch) value, the orientation of the image, and also the Image mode, for example BITMAP, Greyscale or RGB.

The Enhance menu contains a range of functions which can be used to improve the appearance of the image. Including, lighting levels, colour correction, contrast, sharpen and red-eye fix. All of these functions can be operated manually or automatically. The Enhance menu also includes functions which can be used to convert images into black and white or sepia, great for making photos looking dated. See Fig 2 for black and white image of a flower (Fig 1 original).

The Filter menu contains a staggering amount of different functions. These functions are used primarily to change the look of an image. For example, you can apply a filter which converts your photo into a watercolour, oil painting, pencil drawing, mosaic, stained glass window, or even a poster, pretty much anything you want really!!!. It also contains blur functions and other gems like invert, to make your photos a negative. The Filter menu contains a wide range of functions, all of which are great fun to have a play around with. See Fig 3 for the glowing edges filter (Fig 1 original).

Along with all these functions, the Full Edit mode allows layers to be created, so that an image can be built up from different photographs or certain features. This is an extremely powerful function, as it allows you to do just about anything, from making parts of a photo colour and other black and white, to super imposing ghosts on photos!!!

The Full Edit mode is really the cream of the crop as far as photo enhancing and editing software is concerned. It is easy to use even if you're a computer novice, but is packed full of features even a professional would be impressed with it.

~~~~ File Handling ~~~~
Photoshop is capable of handling many different file types, both for loading and saving purposes, including: Photoshop PSD, Bitmap, Camera RAW, GIF, JPEG, JPEG2000, Generic EPS, PCX, Photoshop PDF, Pixar, PNG, Targa, TIFF, Wireless Bitmap, and more…

This is very useful as images can be changed to and from different file types.
I do recommend that if you have changed a photo or image and want to do some further alterations in Photoshop later, that you save it as a "Photoshop" (PSD) format, as the image won't be compressed and the image quality will be kept to a maximum. Once the image has been enhanced and you're happy with the changes you have made, I recommend you save it as a JPEG or TIFF file to reduce the file size and save space on your hard drive.

A RAW converter is also included within the software, if you have a D-SLR camera which is capable of taking RAW images, Photoshop can be used to convert the RAW image to a JPEG or TIFF. The advantages of this are that the photograph settings can be changed, such as exposure, saturation, sharpness etc, before compressing the file. I would recommend anyone who has a camera capable of taking RAW images to try it out; it is a very versatile function and can be used to produce some great results.

~~~~ Organiser ~~~~
This section of Photoshop can be selected through an icon displayed on the main menu bar at the top of the screen in Editor Mode. It automatically orders your photos based on the date they were taken and allows several other organisation methods to be used. Photos can be tagged so that certain photos will only be displayed when the tags are selected; this allows you to find your photos with great ease. Tags can be created under the following sections:
~ Favourites
~ Hidden
~ People
~ Places
~ Events
~ Other

So for example, all photos that contain John could be tagged with a tag named "John" under the people category, or all photos taken in Corfu could be tagged under "Corfu" in the places category. It is possible to add multiple tags to photos as well, such as "John" and "Corfu". It does take time to add tags especially if you have a lot of photos, however the result is great, finding particular photos is much easier and quicker once completed.

As well as tags it is also possible to create collections, this feature is very similar to a photo album, were groups of photos can be stored in one area, a nice feature for showing off wedding pictures etc.

The organiser function of Adobe Photoshop Elements 5 is extremely useful, allowing you to fully mange the way you see your photos and images easily and quickly.

~~~~ Other Functions ~~~~
There are a number of other functions which can be found in both the editor and organiser modes.
Photo-merge function, it is possible to stitch separate photographs together to form one large image. This function in Photoshop allows you to load two or several photos at the same time and merge them into one to create panoramic images. This is great especially if the subject you're taking a photo of is too large to fit in one exposure. The function can be operated automatically, so you don't even have to line the photos up, very useful if you have a lot of panoramic images to create. See Fig 4 for the panoramic picture I created from several photos of a scene on the Isle of Skye.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 5 allows you create gift cards, greeting cards, CD/DVD jackets and CD labels. It has a number of different templates to use, where you simply load in your pictures. I haven't really used this function much, but it does seem impressive the amount of other things Adobe can be used for.

~~~~ Instructions and Support ~~~~
An instruction guide is included with the software explaining how all the functions in Adobe Photoshop work; this is very useful, especially if you're just leaning the Photoshop software. In addition there are a number of tips and tutorials available at www.photoshopelementsuser.com, again I have found this very informative, as the tutorials actually show the different functions in operation, further to this they go into more detail about the individual tools and features.

~~~~ Requirements ~~~~
The software does take a fair amount of computer power to run; taking a large amount of disk space and requiring a fair size of memory to operate. The minimum system requirements listed on the box are as follows:
~ Intel Pentium 4 or Intel Celeron 1.3GHz or higher
~ Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Home Edition, or Media Centre Edition
~ 256MB of RAM
~ 1.5GB of available hard-disk space
~ Colour monitor with 16-bit colour video card
~ 1024 x 768 monitor resolution 96dpi or less
~ Microsoft DirectX 9 compatible display driver
~ CD-ROM drive

I do have a fairly up to date laptop, 2.66GHz and 512MB of RAM, but sometimes especially with multiple files open, the software can run a little slow, making it frustrating when making picture alteration decisions. It is possible to alter the amount of memory Adobe uses through the tools-options menu, so that the program can un a little faster if required, however I would strongly recommend that you consult the instructions before doing so, to make sure you fully understand what you are doing.

The software is dead ease to install on your computer, doesn't take too long and I don't even think you have to restart your computer afterwards!!!

CAUTION: Be careful when purchasing a copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements 5, as some packages are upgrade versions ONLY, so an earlier version of Adobe Photoshop Elements is required.

~~~~ Conclusions ~~~~
Overall a fantastic package, reasonably priced at around £100, which is impressive when compared to other software packages of the same type. I would recommend this product to anyone who wishes to improve the appearance of their photos, organise their photos, create gift cards etc, or just have fun manipulating their pictures. I probably haven't mentioned half the stuff you can do with Adobe Photoshop it really is that impressive.

I hope this review has been of some use, thanks for reading and I'll be happy to take any comments you have.
kirkby100.

P.S. All the pictures shown in this review were taken with my Olympus SP-550UZ, check out my review for more info.