MacDirectory magazine is the premiere creative lifestyle magazine for Apple enthusiasts featuring interviews, in-depth tech reviews, Apple news, insights, latest Apple patents, apps, market analysis, entertainment and more.
Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/90549
REVIEW ADOBE ELEMENTS 11 WORDS BY RIC GETTER Following the progress of Adobe Elements over the years has always been fun. We get to see which new features trickle down from the company's pricier products and sometimes we even see a preview of what is to come in their professional line. In this sense, Adobe's recently released El ements 11follows the same pattern, and in some pleasantly surprising ways. It is also moving in a very interesting new direction—actually two of them. Along one path, it lowers the bar for entry into the hobbyist realm for photo and video enthusiasts, making it possible for beginners to do some very beautiful work. At the same time, it opens up even more pro level tools to the segment of the audience with greater experience and dedication to their craft. Getting Organized ementsand Premiere Elementsis the Organizer, an easy way to manage all your The main launch pad for Adobe Photoshop El digital assets. The Elements applications do not need to re-encode any of your image or movie files. You can keep them stored wherever you like. Organizer for Elements 11 adds some slick new features. You can create groups of related images that appear as stacks. Scrolling over a stack lets you digitally thumb through the pictures they contain. Facial recognition is getting smarter and you can even create smart groups of people (family, friends, business associates, and such). New to Organizer 11 is the ability to assign images and videos to a specific place. Even if your camera doesn't geo-tag on its own, it's easy to drag thumbnails to the included Google Maps interface. Another handy feature for those of us who prefer shooting to sorting is Organizer's ability to evaluate the dates embedded by most cameras into shots and images, making it simpler to assign them to an event or simply plop them on a calendar. Once you have your images in front of you (displayed in larger icons with far better spacing than earlier versions), you have access to Elements' abundant collection of Create and Sharing tools. Another benefit of Organizer is the ability to perform an "Instant Fix" without leaving the program. You can quickly crop an image or, with a mouse click, have Organizer perform smart image adjustments, adjusting things like color, contrast, sharpening and red-eye removal. But you'll be in for a lot more fun when you open up your image in Photoshop El ements 11. More "Photoshop" in Elements 11 In appearance, Photoshop Elements 11 received a significant makeover. The interface is cleaner and a bit brighter with less intrusive tools and status panels and more open space around the image editing area. The previous versions of PS Elements added some of its sibling's remarkable selection abilities. Elements 11 has inherited one of our favorites: smart edge refinement. One of Photoshop users' favorite tricks is to select something from one image and pasting it on top of another. This used to be an utterly laborious task until Adobe added some smart tools to help find edges. But things like fluffy hair, fur or foliage could easily trick even them. The improved Quick Select tool lets you refine where the edge lies and tweak the hardness, softness and coloration around the edge to make your composites nearly perfect. Like previous versions of Photoshop Elements, you have a choice of three editing modes, Quick, Guided and Expert. Quick is great for touch-ups and cropping, and also offers rapid access to some very smart tools for adding text and special effects. The interface is clean, simple and utterly non-threatening. Going a step further into the Guided takes you step-by step through more advanced effects and image corrections. One new Guided effect, adding a vignette, subtly lightens or darkens the corners of an image, focusing the viewer's attention on the central subject. A dark vignette can add a touch of intimacy to an image while a light vignette opens it up. Elements 11 also adds the currently trendy "tilt-shift" effect that 90 MacDirectory