Hugh John manipulates his digital portfolio with a little help from Adobe
It's a problem most software houses would love to have. How to promote and position your entry-level image manipulation and cataloguing software when you already have two of the most powerful and popular imaging applications on the market; namely Photoshop CS (Creative Suite) and Lightroom.
Adobe's solution? Take the essential editing tools from Photoshop, cull the organisational savvy from Lightroom, jiggle them around, throw key features from Premiere, the distinctive livery and set a price no one can match. Ensure that the entire package is, for the first time, PC and Mac compliant, and it's product that should jump off the shelves and bring new admirers at the BETT 2011 show.
Welcome to Photoshop and Premiere Elements, now in version 9. Photoshop Elements offers the user a set of editing and organisational tools that brings it ever closer to elder sibling Photoshop CS5. The single most exciting addition is the Content Aware fill, new to CS5 this year and now incorporated into the Healing Brush tool in Elements.
Content Aware technology, which works by analysing the surrounding area and creating an 'intelligent fill', allows users to perform a sort of pixel sorcery that removes blemishes and embarrassing artefacts – you know, unwanted relatives, animals and the like – with little or no effort. Don't expect miracles though. Apply the content-aware fill to a relatively simple, uncomplicated area – grass, sea, sand, snow, come to mind – and you'll be suitably impressed.
It's a doddle extracting that unwanted skier from an unexciting snowscape or that less than photogenic tree from a grassy slope. You won't, however, have the same instant gratification working in a cluttered, complex, interior environment. Some of your early results may look distinctly mutant-like, but perseverance will be handsomely rewarded.
It's all about automation, what software designers are wont to call 'hand holding', and Photoshop Elements has more hand holding than a nervous teenager on a first date. The photo-merge group style function, for example, allows users to clone the tonal features of a specified image and apply it to one of their own. So, faux-Cartier Bresson portraits of your family pet, are just a couple of clicks away... if that's what you want.
In the same vein, the Guided Edits section will show you how to create an old fashioned photo, apply a saturated slide film effect, simulate a pop art/Andy Warhol style (see above) or produce the very 'now' Lomo camera effects (see top). It's a great tool for encouraging young users to experiment.
New to this version of PSE, and much loved by Photoshop CS users, is Layer Mask technology. This allows users more scope to work non-destructively on images. It was possible for users of earlier versions of PSE to download third party Layer Mask filters but now Adobe has included it in the main program.
The Organizer where users, er, organise, is much improved, its tools gathered together under four main headings; Organize, Fix, Create and Share. Interestingly, the Organiser, which shares the same subdued, almost sombre, colour scheme as Lightroom, straddles PSE and PRE (Premiere Elements) and manages both photo and video media. There's a backup and synchronisation feature, an image analyser and tabs for Fix, Create and Share. As with Lightroom, many of these tabs are collapsible, giving more room for display.
'Find' – 'astonishingly powerful, configurable and versatile'
'Find' is an astonishingly powerful, configurable and versatile tool whose primary function is to gather and collate digital media. It lets the user search by History, Media Type, Caption, Metadata and even by Visual Similarity, using Adobe's face-recognition feature. With many individual users now counting their image libraries by the thousand, cataloguing tools have become an indispensable part of imaging software.
Social networking sites are now so firmly embedded in online life that program developers ignore them at their peril. Adobe has configured the Organizer to post images and videos to a selection of these sites including Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and, unsurprisingly, Photoshop.com. Mac users will welcome the ability to transfer digital media from Apple's iPhoto to Elements 9 Organizer.
Adobe describes Premiere Elements as, "a complete movie editor software solution." This new version has been revamped to take advantage of recent developments in digital video. It's possible to save projects in a wide range of formats including Flip Video and to a number of DSLR cameras including some from Canon’s popular EOS range.
Adobe has also thrown in a package of new audio effects, six in all – Audio Polish, Auto Mute,Cleaner, Hum Remover, Noise Fader, and Noise Reducer – which are intended to minimise unwanted background hum, hiss and rattle. Audio Polish, the most powerful tool in the suite features compression, noise reduction, reverb simulation and a brightness control.
As previously mentioned, the Elements Organizer serves both Photoshop and Premiere, first and foremost as a cataloguing tool. This means that you can import videos into PE directly from internal or external hard drive, camera or camcorder. The video clips which are going to be used are dragged on to the Project Panel which presents them in either Timeline or Sceneline modes. Timeline shows the audio and video tracks running horizontally across the bottom of the screen and Sceneline presents video clips in thumbnail format. You can then enlist the help of Premiere’s Auto Analyser tool to select the best video clips.
Photoshop and Premiere Elements and Elements Organizer is a suite that allows users to import, edit, catalogue save and - if needed - export digital files in a huge variety of formats. And as easily and quickly as possible. The availability of these tools on the Mac platform will surely interest Apple users looking for an alternative to iMovie.
This package is exceptional value for money (see also Digital School Collection details, below).
Ratings (out of 5)
Fitness for purpose 5
Ease of use 5
Features 4
Quality 4
Value for money 5
Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Elements
Street price £75
www.adobe.com/products/psprelements/
Adobe steps up creativity and cost-cutting at BETT
Liz Wilkins, UK education marketing manager outlines Adobe's priorities for 2011
"Our theme for BETT this year is creativity in the classroom and demonstrating how the good use of ICT can increase not only creative skills but also learning outcomes for students outside traditional creative courses.
"We want to champion creativity in schools and colleges and we offer curriculum help, a certification programme, and teaching resources to help train students in the creativity skills that we all need to help the economy. The research report (see below) shows that creativity is valued really highly. However, the disturbing thing is that the majority of students can't demonstrate their creativity when they apply for a place at university or are in the real world when seeking a job.
"Interestingly, employers and lecturers think that schools should be doing more to encourage creative approaches to the work that their students do, and more than 90 per cent of employers see a direct link between ICT and creativity. That's a really powerful statistic and it's something that we see in the schools that we talk to on a regular basis.
"For example, there ís an excellent school in Enfield called Highlands School, it's a specialist school and is using Adobe technology across the curriculum. On one particular course the teacher uses After Effects with his students, and last year the BTEC students created their first feature film which was presented in the Highlands' Oscars. One of the things that emerged is that while there ís little difference in the academic ability between the genders, a high proportion of the weakest boys academically would actually be at the top in media classes.
'Realising their creative skills keeps them from being disruptive'
"For those students, being given the opportunity to realise their more creative skills also keeps them from being disruptive in other lessons. That's something we see echoed in lots of schools. Greg Hodgson, an advanced skills teacher and head of media arts at The Chalfonts Community College sees a real connection between engaging boys in digital art and enabling them to realise that they can be successful. It increases their general confidence and their numeracy skills.
"You need to have some knowledge of maths to be able to use After Effects or Flash, but when the students are using Adobe products they don't see it as doing maths in art or media. They just see it as being creative but actually they're employing specific maths skills and it's helping them in other parts of their school work. At Highlands School year 12 leavers got places in top film TV production companies. Others have set themselves up as freelancers.
"We can see a direct link between Adobe products in the classroom driving that creativity and students' success. Where we've seen great success with Photoshop, for example, is in schools that are delivering the Adobe Certified Associate (ACA) exam which we've recently had endorsed by awarding body OCR and which is now embedded into their creative iMedia suite of qualifications.
"We've worked really hard to get the Adobe School Collection into market in time for BETT. It ís a promotion which is running through to the February 28 and is, effectively, Photoshop Elements 9 and Premier Elements 9 at a significantly reduced price for primary and secondary schools. We've bundled these two products together and packaged them in 10, 50 and 100 licensed packs so for schools that are looking to get digital photo and video editing across the curriculum they can buy the 10 pack for just £330. We recognise that there is a real need to help schools manage their ICT budget effectively.
"We have also recently announced a new version of Adobe Connect and we are seeing some amazing uses of it in education; for example, virtual assemblies. In a large school, trying to get all the students together in one place at one time is almost impossible but Connect could be used at a virtual assembly, giving the head the opportunity to talk to all of the students at the same time and get a message out to every single student in that school, without the logistical nightmare of running, say, four assemblies over four days.
"Getting creative industries into the classrooms is hugely important for students intending to work in the creative sector (see Futurelab's 'Welcome to the zone of optimal challenge'). They need to understand what the creative industry is about, the type of skills that are needed and the environment they would be working in: to understand, in short, that what they're doing in school is preparing them to be successful in the creative industry.
http://www.adobe.com/go/creativity
Adobe's response to the Comprehensive Spending Review
BETT 2011, January 12-15
Olympia, London
Adobe Systems UK: stands V47/K40
