Adobe Releases Photoshop Elements 6 and Premiere Elements 4

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200709/092407PREPSE.html' target='_blank'>http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200709/092407PREPSE.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced two major upgrades to its digital photo and video software for consumers: Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 6 for Windows® &amp; Adobe Premiere® Elements 4 for Windows. Tight integration and a shared Organizer, with a common database accessible from either application, allow users to do more with their photos and videos. Available separately or together in a single retail package, Photoshop Elements &amp; Adobe Premiere Elements software give photo and video enthusiasts more creative ways to organize, edit, create and share digital photos and home movies."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/pse6_pre4_boxshot_left.jpg" /><br /><br />I feel that Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements are among the most underrated applications out there today. Especially Photoshop Elements, which is extremely powerful and can do almost everything an average user needs, without the extreme price of Photoshop CS3. Both applications are tied to the same release cycle, so they get updated pretty much on a yearly basis with new features.<br /><br />Photoshop Elements 6 has a <A HREF=http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200709/092407PSE6.html" target="_blank">bunch of new features</A>, the most interesting of which is Photomerge®, which claims to be able to take the best facial expressions from different photos and combine them into one image. I've seen something similar to this from Microsoft research, but as is sadly typical, Microsoft comes up with a great idea and never manages to bring it to market. If Photomerge works as well as the marketing materials say it does, this will be a big deal - especially for those with children, who never seem to make the same face twice.<br /><br />Premiere Elements 4 <a href="http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200709/092407PRE4.html">continues to evolve</a>, now offering a direct-to-YouTube upload feature, which also claims to support "other social networking sites" (I suspect Facebook and MySpace are included). They also seem to have included <a href="http://www.muvee.com">muvee</a>-like functionality with the ability to "apply event- or style-based movie themes to turn a sequence of scenes into a polished movie in just a few clicks". We'll see what that turns out like - so far I've never seen any program that can do what muvee does.<br /><br />I was pleased to see that they were offering an upgrade for instant download, available even to myself in Canada, but imagine my surprise when I purchased it and discovered that I couldn't download it until October 8th! So I'll have to wait to see what I think of it...

[David Horn]

Can the new Premiere Elements handle AVCHD footage? Nothing about it in the press release, though it seems a bit strange to release a new piece of editing software at this point and *not* include it.

[bcre8v2]

I upgraded to Elements primarily for Vista and the HDV support and have been very happy with Premiere Elements 3.
Photoshop Elements 5, on the other hand, has given me quite a few headaches w.r.t. running out of memory space with 10 MP images. I can't even merge (creating a collage) multiple files of this size. I found it works fine on my computer up to 8 MP (I have 3 GB RAM).
I ended up going back to PSE version 2 on another XP system.
(Yes, I also have CS2, but it is a resource hog and can't keep spending $$ to upgrade everytime a new version comes out).

Here's my question for the "Team" (maybe a poll?): What apps are you guys using for large image editing and manipulation?

Thanks,

-Steve

[Jason Dunn]

Photoshop Elements 5, on the other hand, has given me quite a few headaches w.r.t. running out of memory space with 10 MP images.

Hmm - that's very curious. I use Photoshop Elements 5 on my Vista system, like yours with 3 GB of RAM, and haven problem editing my 10 megapixel images from the D200. Rather...strange. You've applied the latest patch for the software? (I think, actually, the only patch) Have you customized your swap file settings or anything similar?

[Gordo]

Am I the only one who feels that a $30 discount to upgrade is not enough?

$119.99 instead of $149.99

Is there really that much new functionality in the product that I need to pay almost full price for it!

[bcre8v2]

Have you customized your swap file settings or anything similar?

Good catch - I have applied the patch, but the answer was the swap file! My boot drive is E: (80 GB SATA) and my data drive is C: (500 GB SATA). After installing "Vistah" I had moved the swap from E: to C: (space and performance). By deleting the file, rebooting, and recreating a 3 GB paging file on C:, I can successfully merge quite a few large images!
Thanks for that suggestion!!

[bcre8v2]

BTW: I am impressed that Digital Media Thoughts has become a digital troubleshooting and solutions community as well!!

Let's keep it up.

Cheers everyone! :beer:
-Steve

[Jason Dunn]

Am I the only one who feels that a $30 discount to upgrade is not enough?

I hear you - it seems like deep discounts are offered less and less on sub-$200 software nowadays. I looked at Roxio's Easy Media Creator 10 and the upgrade is $99 with a $30 rebate...while the full version is $99 with a $20 rebate...huh?? 8O

The sad part is that because no retail store in Canada will even CARRY the upgrade, I've always paid full price for each version of the software until this time when I did the digital download. :roll:

[Jason Dunn]

My boot drive is E: (80 GB SATA) and my data drive is C: (500 GB SATA). After installing "Vistah" I had moved the swap from E: to C: (space and performance).

Aha! Good to hear I could help out - most of the time Vista works fine unless you change something, then all bets are off. ;-) Glad to hear it's now working!