Adobe Photoshop Elements 11, Upgrade Version (PC/Mac)

Adobe Photoshop Elements is now firmly established as the market leader for home users serious about photograph editing. This latest version 11 has had a major interface upgrade over the previous version 10, and now has a more pleasant light grey colour scheme. As before, Elements 11 is split into the Photo Editor and the Photo Organizer applications (with options to flip between the two for the full photo editor). In Elements Organizer once I found 'Folder Hierachy' mode, it was easy to right-click 'import media' and load whole directories of photos in as the thumbnails. The revamped Organizer is much improved and there's the usual Organizer photo folder search options, including face recognition for tagged people (which can be a bit hit and miss), photo metadata (e.g. camera type), and tagged locations.

Right click over an image in Organizer and you can jump to the Elements 11 Photo-Editor. Once loaded the Photo Editor is now clearly separated into Quick, Guided and Expert modes. Quick mode just has 'smart fix', exposure, colour balance, and sharpen. Next there's the Guided wizard mode to help you through editing step by step, and finally there's the powerful Expert mode that switches to the full photo editor (giving you access to many of the same powerful photo editing tools as in Photoshop CS6, albeit in simpler cut down form).

The window buttons are now larger and easier to see, and the new menu structure is a more logical, e.g. Photomerge has now easier to find in the top menu of 'Enhanced'. Usefully the Organizer and Editor both stay open so you can quickly flip between the two. In fact the new interface is so superior to Elements 9 & 10, personally I upgraded for this reason alone - although it's almost as cheap to buy the complete new licence edition, and with that you can legally install your old version onto another PC at the office. Otherwise though there's not so much in terms of new tools or features over Elements 9/10: a few new filter effects (The Comic Filter being particularly good, which converts photos to 'illustrations'), a simple Vignette tool (giving a engraved bookplate effect), and a 'refine edge' tool to further help you select objects within the photo for say cutting and pasting or transforming in shape.

All the old Elements Image Editor tools are there: tools streamlined to make colour, contrast and lighting adjustments even quicker (useful for old faded 35mm slide scans). You can use the 'quickfix' options or you can load the full image editor for greater manual control, such as adjust sharpness, levels, hue and skin colour/tones. Standard tools include crop and adjust image size (pixels) and you can just edit selected areas of the photos using various object selection tools. The software will also integrate with slide/flatbed scanner interfaces if you are into scanning film or paper, and the shadow/highlight tool is essential for bringing out detail in shadows from any slide/negative scan. Elements can handle large RAW camera images and you can correct lens barrel distortion using the specific tool or various generic `Transform' tools. Plus there's layers and layer masks for complex photo manipulation like copying a smiling head from one photo into another, and tools to do things like remove a traffic sign from the scene. You can recompose [shrink] photos without losing detail, and use Photomerge to create fantastic panoramas or merge/delete objects from a sequence of photos. This pack can upgrade any previous version of Elements, from v1.0 upwards. Once installed Elements 11 auto-updates itself to patch bugs or add features. With our Windows 7 64-bit PCs I found Photoshop Elements 11 worked perfectly - you can download a fully working version from Adobe for a free 30 day trail (it runs under Window XP, Vista, Windows 7 and 8, and Apple Mac OsX 10.6 or above).

Elements 11 Organiser is simpler than of old, largely as you have to manually point and select folders for import (although subfolders can be grabbed at the same time), so it works more like a traditional file directory tree system, which I like, as it's quite efficient and speedy. You can sort the photo collection into media, people, place or events (e.g. weddings) if you wish. Photos with embedded geolocation can automatically be tagged onto Google maps, so you can also sort by location. Once you create albums you can share these quickly on-line with a click or two. In fact overall Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 has become so much better than the similarly priced opposition that its major competitor is now the sibling Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 (that offers faster Organizer/Editing speed and better Raw file support, albeit with simpler Photo Editing options). Other alternatives include the various increasingly powerful photo apps for tablets that offer cheap quality image editing solutions for casual users, and there is Corel's Paintshop Pro X5 Ultimate which offers extras like superior filters and batch processing, but it's complex to learn and slow even by Elements standards. Experienced Photoshop CS6 Extended users will find Photoshop Elements 11 easier to use, as it shares similar tool names and menu structures. At work we use both Photoshop CS6 and Elements 11, which is on many workstations where the high cost of CS6 can't be justified. Adobe's Elements 11 help is quite good, and there's plenty of free advice on the internet.

You can buy Photoshop Elements 11 as a cheap double pack with the excellent Adobe Premiere Elements 11 [video editing] - and Adobe offer educational discounts for schoolkids/teachers/students/colleges, with big savings for Photoshop CS6 Extended and Adobe Design Premium as well.

Improved interface from the Organiser & better access to quick edit tools. Oneof the main reasons for upgrading from Elements 8 was to get a version which would backup successfully. Still fails when writing to disc - claims to be a firmware error, but curiously its the same errror on a new Blu-Ray writer as I got when writing to the 10th DVD in my older DVD writer. In both cases Elements then crashes and teh DVD/Blu-Ray disc is trashed - what's even worse, Elements thinks its done a full back up so can't pick up from where it left off.
Another problem if you use iTunes to sync photos to an Apple device - its stopped working in 11. Albums created in 11 & photos moved into existing albums using 11 are not recognised by iTunes so not synced. Problem recognised on both Elements & iTunes forums but neither company coming up with answer so, if this is a significant feature for you, might be worth delaying buying.

very good layout, clear directions for tools etc. a advace on earlier versions. in earlier versions a large instruction manual was included a pity that this has been discontinued.