TopTenREVIEWS Silver Award winning Photoshop/Premiere Elements 8 bundle from Adobe offers more ways to organize, edit, create and share media than any other solution in the Digital Media Studio category.
The difference in capture types is beginning to blur. The latest camera phones are being released with three to five megapixel cameras and allow for some amazing clarity. Also, cell phone manufactures are incorporating improved video capabilities into new phones. Now, not only can you take great photos from your phone, you can also capture good quality video. This has effectively put a quality video camera in the hands of most consumers and people are using them to capture everything from stupid pet tricks to little league baseball games.
With so many video and photo capture options it is not a surprise that Digital Media Studio developers are adjusting their focus to target average consumers. Enthusiasts need a tool that is easy to use but doesn’t limit results. With this in mind, many new products are offering media managers, integrated editors and a variety of sharing tools. The Adobe Photoshop/Premiere Elements 8 bundle is at the front of the pack for general media consumer solutions.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 can capture digital photos from just about any source; digital cameras and camcorders, cell phones, external storage devices such as a flash drive, scanners and email. If it can take or store a digital image, you can probably use it with this program.
With Photoshop Elements 8 you can still crop, straighten, clean-up and perform other basic editing tasks quickly and easily. It also allows you to whiten teeth and eliminate wrinkles better than any pharmaceutical product on the market today.
There are also several new features available in the latest version of this powerful Elements bundle including Photomerge® Exposure, Recompose and People recognition.
The new Photomerge® Exposure tool allows you to combine two photos into one. The trick with using this feature is that it works best when you take two or more pictures sequentially. For example, taking one photo with the flash on, then immediately taking another with the flash off.
Photomerge® Exposure basically stacks the two photos one on top of the other, then you scrub the area of the photo you want to show through. There is no advanced selection required for this tool. Just a quick scribble will tell Photoshop Elements what to show through.
The Recompose tool in Photoshop Elements 8 is a simpler version of a tool featured in the professional Photoshop CS4 package. This tool lets you automatically resize photos without distorting the most important parts. You can even tell the program which parts are most important.
People Recognition is used to quickly apply tags based on who is in the photo. Photoshop Elements will identify pictures that have faces in them and can actually learn to recognize people. Imagine you have several new pictures of your children as young adults; say in their late teens or even early twenties. You can use People Recognition to tag these photos with the person’s name and as Photoshop learns more about what people look like it will start making suggestions for other photos stored on your computer. It can even get to the point where it will recognize much older pictures of people from when they were children just based on tagging pictures of them as adults. It can recognize people with different hairstyles; from different angles and even if they are wearing dark sun glasses. We experienced Photoshop doing just this and were quite impressed.
When you import a photo into Photoshop Elements 8 and select the Quick Fix tool, you will see a preview screen that shows the results of editing before you actually apply them to the photo. If you don’t like the results of the Quick Fix tool you can use individual tools to adjust brightness, contrast and saturation and apply minor touch-up individually.
Versioning your photos is a great way to keep the original photo intact after applying edits and effects. This is essentially the same as using the save-as command. It creates a duplicate of the original and applies changes to that instead of modifying the original. We recommend preserving original photos in a separate folder so they may be accessed at a later date.
To really get the biggest bang out of Photoshop Elements 8, we recommend using Photoshop.com. After buying this new version you automatically get automatic online backup and 2GB of storage at Photoshop.com. There you will also find a Multi-machine synchronization tool that allows your family to share photos from multiple computers. You can also access your photos and videos stored at Photoshop.com from any web-enabled computer.
Adobe Premiere Elements 8 can import video in a variety of formats including ASF, AVI, AVCHD, SWF, DV, DVD, H.264, HDV, MOD and TOD (JVC Everio, import only), MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MP3, WAV, QuickTime, Windows Media, and WMA. Other formats may also be available. Check out the Adobe website for more information about format options.
Adobe Premiere CS4 is a powerful editing program used by many Hollywood production companies. Premiere Elements 8 is like CS4's little brother. Adobe developed Elements to suit the average consumer but still includes quality tools that allow you to produce professional results from your home computer.
One of the best things about Premiere Elements 8 is the open timeline. This allows you to quickly drag and drop video and audio files, apply edits and effects, and trim or select specific scenes. Everything is done in one user interface which eliminates a lot of confusion.
Some of the cool new tools available in Premiere Elements 8 are Motion Tracking, Smart trim and additional graphics, frames, and animations.
Motion Tracking allows you to select an object and track it throughout the scene. This can be used to apply a “Cops” style face blurring effect. Just select the object you want to track – a person’s face in this instance – and apply the effect. Premiere Elements 8 will then track and apply the effect to that object throughout the scene. This tool can also be used to insert clipart or other objects into a scene.
Smart Trim will automatically analyze a scene and make recommendations to eliminate less interesting or low quality footage. This is great if you have a scene where a person is entering and exiting the shot and you don’t have any need for the empty frames. After Premiere Elements 8 has made suggestions you can go through and tell the program what to keep and what to delete.
Smart Fix lets you automatically adjust shaky footage and color and lighting problems in a video to make sure that every clip looks its best.
Adobe claims there are 99 audio and video tracks available in Premiere Elements 8. The truth is that there are more. There is nothing that limits you from adding track 100, 101, 102, etc. There appears to be a limitless number of tracks as long as your hardware can handle it.
When you are ready to apply audio to your video Premiere Elements 8 lets you do that too. You can seamlessly balance audio elements that will give your videos professional-quality sound.
The Adobe Photoshop/Premiere Elements 8 bundle offers many exporting options including exporting to DVD or Blu-ray, exporting audio only and exporting a still frame. You can even export a scene as a series of still images if you would like.
This program also comes loaded to share directly to Photoshop.com, YouTube, PodBean (podcast publishing) and can upload video to a website via FTP.
Premiere Elements 8 can export video to SD and HD formats like AVI, Blu-ray Disc, DV, DVD, Dolby® Digital Stereo, H.264, HDV, JPEG, MOD and TOD (JVC Everio, import only), MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MP3, WAV, QuickTime, Windows Media, and 3GP. You can also use Premiere Elements 8 to publish podcasts and YouTube videos.
Exporting some formats including AVCHD, DVD, Blu-ray, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and H.264, may require activation or download of other components. Also, exporting 3GP, 3GP2, MOV, MPEG-4, and QuickTime requires QuickTime software to be installed on your computer.
There are several disc menu templates available in Premiere Elements 8, although multi level menus are not yet offered. If you prefer a more custom look you can create disc menus from scratch. You can rearrange or even edit individual menu buttons, add an audio track and change the background image for the menu screen.
Adobe offers support for all of their products. They provide telephone and email support along with a few more technically advanced options. In addition to these options you will find a library of help for both products at Adobe.com.
Photoshop Elements has a user moderated forum but it doesn’t look like there is one for Premiere Elements. There are tutorials available through Adobe TV for both Premiere Elements and Photoshop Elements.
Adobe dominates the Digital Media Studio category. The Photoshop/Premiere Elements 8 bundle provides more tools, features, and editing capabilities than any other product in this category.
The biggest reason to upgrade from Elements 7 to Elements 8 is for the improved tagging and cataloging capabilities of the new version. Most of the editing features and tools remain unchanged except for a few mentioned in this review.
For individual photo and video editing solutions check out our Photo Editing Software and Video Editing Software sites. Also, check out our “Best Photo Editing Software Buying Guide.”
