Adobe Releases Photoshop Elements 8 and Premiere Elements 8

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.adobe.com/products/psprelements/' target='_blank'>http://www.adobe.com/products/psprelements/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 &amp; Adobe Premiere Elements 8 software gives you power and ease of use so you can do some amazing storytelling with photos and videos. Create extraordinary photos and incredible movies, and use them together in cinematic slide shows and more."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1254162481.usr1.jpg" style="border: 0;" /></p><p>Another year, another version of Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements. It still feels like v7 of both products are "new" to me, but Adobe has locked into a yearly release cycle for both these products so I shouldn't be surprised. I'm a big fan of Photoshop Elements and use it daily. I happen to believe that a large number of people using Photoshop really don't need it, and encourage people to give Photoshop Elements a try whenever I can - it's a very capable program that can do everything most people need to do. There's certainly a place for the full-fledged version of Photoshop in the marketplace, but I think people buy into the "I need to have Photoshop, nothing else will do" a little too often.</p><p>Premiere Elements? I have mixed feelings about this program. On the one hand, it's delightfully easy to use - everything is fairly intuitive about it, and after having used it for a few years I can work really quickly with it. The down-side is that, in general, it's not a very stable program. Prior to v7, I'd describe it as "crash happy". Things got much better with v7, but I still had trouble with it on a fairly frequent basis. What boggles the mind is that Adobe seems to be the only company in the world that never releases software patches or updates for their Elements line - they don't fix bugs, or address new codecs, they just release a new version and presumably fix the problem in the new version. As an example, Premiere Elements 7 chokes on the AVCHD Lite files from my Panasonic DMC-ZS3 camera. Is there going to be an update to fix this problem? Nope. Will it work properly in v8? Yes, it's likely that it will. So I'll very likely give v8 a try and hope that things get better with it again...</p>

[jaxim]

I tried PSE8 and from a PSE7 user, there isn't much that has changed to warrant the hefty price of a full version.

I did like the new face recognition feature. However, I would have liked it better if you could select from existing people tags when choosing a tag to associate with a tag. Instead, you have to type the tag the very first time you are associate a tag with a face. After the 1st time, you can choose from a dropdown. Not a huge problem, but a bit of an inconvenience that could have been easily avoided. The face recognition software is only good with photos. It can't automatically tag videos (which would be a really cool feature!)

I also like that now you don't need to own both Premiere Elements AND Photoshop Elements to organize AVCHD files. With Elements 7, you could only import AVCHD files into the shared organizer with Premiere Elements. With Elements 8, you can import AVCHD files directly into the organizer with Photoshop Elements 8. This is great because I had originally bought PE7 just so I could have a way to organize my AVCHD library. Now I don't need Premiere Elements and just use PSE8. (I really wish they sold the organizer separate from PSE and PE because more professional software for editing my media.)


Aside from these advances there isn't much that has changed that I really care about. If there was a $30 upgrade price I would get the new software, but for $80+, it's not worth it. I'll wait to upgrade until next year when 9 comes out or when an upgrade price is introduced or when I win the software thru a giveaway contest from some cool blog (hint, hint ;-)

[Jason Dunn]

I tried PSE8 and from a PSE7 user, there isn't much that has changed to warrant the hefty price of a full version.

Yeah, I've never really understood why Adobe doesn't have better upgrade options, especially for software they're releasing yearly. I suppose it's because it's not very expensive to begin with, but still, not everyone wants to pay $100 a year to have the latest versions of Elements. I thought at one point they had some sort of upgrade, but I can't find it anywhere on their site...

I did like the new face recognition feature. However, I would have liked it better if you could select from existing people tags when choosing a tag to associate with a tag.

I don't suppose Adobe's face recognition embeds the data into the metadata of the photo itself?

[Jonathon Watkins]

I don't suppose Adobe's face recognition embeds the data into the metadata of the photo itself?

I really hope it does. The face recognition feature is rather compelling. It currently takes me a long time to do all the tagging, I have a huge backlog and this would be a major timesaver - IF I can stamp the metadata into the exif of the jpgs.

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Looks like good timing for me. Might just pick up the bundle.

[jaxim]

I don't suppose Adobe's face recognition embeds the data into the metadata of the photo itself?

No, it doesn't but you can routinely select your files to write the face tags (and your other tags) to the meta data. The only thing though is that this is only a one way procedure. For example, once you write the tags to the metadata, you can not edit the metadata tags by editing the tags within Elements. You will need to go to the photo file's properties (or use another program) to make changes to the existing metadata keywords.

This is one of the problems that I wish Adobe would address. I can understand why they want to write the tag data to an Elements database program so it's quicker to perform certain tasks within the program, but why not automatically sync the metadata and the Elements tags so it's a 2 way communication?

Change the Elements tag, then the metadata tag is changed. Change the metadata outside of Elements, then Elements should warn you that the file is out of sync and ask for further instructions from you on what to do next.

[Stinger]

Random question - How well does Windows 7 handle AVCHD Lite files? Does Windows Media Player support them? How about Movie Maker?

[Jason Dunn]

No, it doesn't but you can routinely select your files to write the face tags (and your other tags) to the meta data.

I'm curious, what EXIF/IPTC tags does it use to store the Face data?

[Jason Dunn]

Random question - How well does Windows 7 handle AVCHD Lite files? Does Windows Media Player support them? How about Movie Maker?

The AVCHD Lite files coming off my Panasonic DMC-ZS3 play just fine in Windows Media Player on Windows 7, and the files work great in Windows Live Movie Maker. :)

[jaxim]

I'm curious, what EXIF/IPTC tags does it use to store the Face data?

It stores it as a regular keyword tag. Nothing special. There's no data written to the file regarding WHERE the face is located in the photo.

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Heh, I think we've all been spoilt by Facebook. :P

[doogald]

It stores it as a regular keyword tag. Nothing special. There's no data written to the file regarding WHERE the face is located in the photo.

That's probably the key problem - how to identify were the face is, particularly if you manually add an undetected face, or need to mark something that is incorrectly identified as a face as something that is not a face (i.e., a texture, a statue), or someone you are not interested in tagging - that prevents a two-way sync of this data.

I've read that Apple's iPhoto has an internal database in your photo library that stores face data; they are not part of the EXIF data for each photo. And you cannot move the database files from one iPhoto library to another. (You can, however, back up the faces database and move it back into a library if the library becomes corrupted.)

It would be nice if there was some sort of standard that was defined that attached the face data to metadata of each photo, for the sake of portability, etc.

[Jason Dunn]

It stores it as a regular keyword tag. Nothing special. There's no data written to the file regarding WHERE the face is located in the photo.

Hmm. That's what I thought. I guess ultimately that's not such a bad thing, because it's not like you care where the face is, only that the photo contains that person you're looking for.

[Jonathon Watkins]

Hmm. That's what I thought. I guess ultimately that's not such a bad thing, because it's not like you care where the face is, only that the photo contains that person you're looking for.

Yup - same thought here. It sound like it's good enough for what I'm looking for. A photographer cares about *who* is in the picture. If you can't work out where the face is, you have bigger problems. ;-)

[Jason Dunn]

Yup - same thought here. It sound like it's good enough for what I'm looking for. A photographer cares about *who* is in the picture. If you can't work out where the face is, you have bigger problems

I thought this way too, until I read a comment from someone else that said part of face tagging is allowing one generation to identify the next...as in, if we took the photo we'll know who's in it, but what about 100 years from now when we're dead? I have old photos I've scanned where I have no clue who the person is...so this is a real problem. I think specific, coordinate-based face tagging is important for the industry to come to an agreement on.

[doogald]

I'd think that you'd want face coordinates and names in the EXIF metatags to ensure that if you move to a new platform, you can take your face tagging with you. One of the great features of face tagging is the ability to recognize faces in future photos - you train the application to recognize people. If you import tagged photos into another app - say that somebody else comes out with a super-fantastic photo app in the future - you'll likely not want to go through that training process all over again.