Technology Update

Review: Adobe Photoshop Elements 14

Introduction and features

Photoshop Elements is Adobe's cut-price consumer version of Photoshop CC. Although it doesn't offer the full feature set of its bigger brother, there's plenty of depth to this beginner-friendly photo editor. Unlike CC, a monthly subscription isn't required, so it's worth considering if you prefer to pay up front for your software. If you're into video editing, you can also choose to buy it bundled with Adobe Premiere Elements.

This is the 14th version of Photoshop Elements. With new features such as shake reduction and dehaze, as well as improvements to facial recognition and guided edits, the photo editor has much to offer for both beginners and experienced users.

Elements comes in two parts, the organizer and the editor. The editor also includes a pared-down version of Adobe Camera Raw for processing images taken in the raw format.

The Elements organizer

The organizer is for sorting your image library, with intelligent modes that help to divide your photos into categories based on People, Places and Events. All three categories have been improved since Elements 13. Facial recognition is the biggest revelation. Tasked with pulling out faces from a set of 200 wedding photos, the new organizer's success rate was about a third better than the old Elements 13 organizer, with fewer mistakes. What's more, as you add new photos Elements will recognise faces and automatically add them to a person's stack. If you like to organise your photos by faces, the improvements are very welcome.

Quick Edits

Elements' photo editor is split into three editing modes, Quick, Guided and Expert. Alongside this is eLive, which gives access to a curated selection of online tutorials. Each of the three editing modes cater for different levels of expertise. In the Quick mode, settings and menus are kept to a minimum, with access to simple tonal adjustments and one-click effects. Along with the 50 or so useful ready-made effects, new to Elements 14 are 'Smart Looks'. This feature pulls out five effects from a database of over 2500, based on analysis of the image in question. It's an interesting approach to the current craze for retro effects that says, rather than just adding a generic preset, we'll instead tailor that preset to a particular image. However, in practice the five effects it offers can often seem rather random.

New Guided edits

For those who want to take their image-editing further, the Guided mode offers 40 step-by-step guides for tasks like creating composites, spot color effects and restoring old photos. The interface has been improved in Elements 14, with interactive sliders that show before/after images for each effect.

There are also two new guided edits. The first addresses one of the most frequent questions posed by beginners – How do I resize my photo for web/print? The solution is a step by step tutorial with quick access to all the relevant tools. This may not be offering anything new in terms of tools, but it's an astute feature that helpfully guides beginners through a perplexing process. The other new guided edit is for adding motion blur to suggest subject movement, which, although fun, is more of a gimmick.

One of the clever things about the three editing modes is that you can switch between them as you go. For example, if you use a guided edit to add a zoom burst effect and then switch to the Expert mode, you can peek under the hood of the guided edit to see how the effect takes shape on different layers. It's a useful learning device that will help beginners to get to grips with Photoshop fundamentals like layers and masks. Then once you're ready to make the move, the Expert Mode gives you full access to all the wonderful tools, filters, layer styles, blend modes, and other features that Elements offers.

New features and verdict

New to Elements 14 is the Haze removal command. Recently introduced into Camera Raw and Lightroom, this helpfully cuts through atmospheric haze in your photos for deeper shadow detail and extra clarity. In keeping with the Elements 'make it simple' mantra, there's an auto-dehaze feature alongside the manual control that does the job with a single click.

Shake reduction

Also making the move from Photoshop CC is Shake Reduction. This sharpens up shaky photos, caused when the camera moves during the exposure. It can't perform miracles, but it can turn a shaky mess into something usable, perhaps even printable.

Complex cut-outs

The new Refine Selection brush is designed to make life easier for those who like to make complex composites and cut-outs by aiding selection of tricky edges like soft fur or hair. On the face of it, it's an impressive tool. But it's nothing new, and Elements 13 users can happily get the same impressive results by dipping into the powerful Refine Edge command.

Is Elements 14 worth the upgrade?

The big question for existing Elements users is, is it worth upgrading? If you've got Elements 13 or even 12 then probably not. There's isn't a huge amount of innovation going on here, with arguably the two headline features – dehaze and shake reduction – being hand-me-downs from Photoshop CC. The new guided edits are useful, but underneath the lick of paint they're really just Photoshop Actions. And far from being a new feature, the Refine Selection brush offers nothing more than the brush found in the Elements 13/12/11's Refine Edge command, except now it's slightly easier to find.

By presenting the brush as a brand new feature, Adobe has only served to underline the fact that, elsewhere, not a great deal has changed.

Perhaps most disappointingly, other than the standard camera format updates, the Camera Raw plugin has been left untouched. But then maybe that's part of the point. Elements isn't all that interested in appeasing raw-shooting DSLR users – they can get their kicks in Lightroom or CC. Adobe understands that everybody is a photographer now, and so it's made a photo editor for everybody. The real strength of Elements is that Adobe has managed to do this while still offering great depth for the advanced user. And thanks to the different editing modes, the journey from absolute beginner to seasoned photoshopper is smoother than ever.

Do the math

In the past the difference in cost between Elements and the full Photoshop was so vast that most of us made a decision on which version to go for based on the price alone. But these days things aren't as clear cut. For the same outlay as Elements 14, you can get 10 months worth of Photoshop CC, plus Lightroom and a bunch of Mobile Apps, with a subscription to the Adobe Photographer's Bundle . For professionals and serious image editors, there's no doubt that the photographer's bundle offers far greater value for money. But cancel the CC subscription at the end of those 10 months and you're left with nothing, whereas Elements is for keeps.

Verdict

Elements 14 comes with several interesting new features, along with the usual smattering of hand-me-downs from Photoshop CC. It's certainly the best Elements yet, but the improvements are incremental rather than impressive. An already excellent program has been made very slightly better. If you're looking for an entry-level photo editor with a superb learning curve, you can't go wrong. But if you're thinking of upgrading from Elements 12 or 13, then perhaps wait for the next version, or treat yourself to a Creative Cloud subscription instead.

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