Adobe Photoshop is great for editing photos, and Adobe Album is pretty good at whipping your collection into shape. But what if you're intimidated by Photoshop's hard-core editing tools -- or its high price -- and you find Album is a bit lightweight for your needs? If you're a Goldilocks about imaging, Adobe might have come up with something that's just right: Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0, the newest version of Adobe's photo-editing and organisational program for hobbyists.
Upside: We hate the phrase end-to-end, but in this case, it looks to be spot on: Photoshop Elements 3.0 has all the tools a hobbyist needs for organising, editing, and sharing photos. On the organisational front, the program offers nifty tools such as hierarchical tagging and stacking of similar images within the File Browser. In addition to the standard Photoshop-like editing tools, Elements 3.0 also offers SmartFix options with before-and-after comparisons for operations such as red-eye removal, removing colour casts, and adjusting brightness. It also features a variation on one of the most useful tools in Photoshop, the Healing Brush, which zaps blemishes and wrinkles -- we dinged last year's version of the program for omitting it. You can also create WMV-format slide shows, burn VCDs, and upload your shots to Adobe Photo Services. The program now supports raw files, too.
Downside: We don't see any red flags, but if you need a broader feature set, you might be happier with Jasc Paint Shop Pro, and if you want your hand held a bit more, Microsoft Digital Image Suite might better serve you.
Outlook: Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 falls in a sweet spot in the photo software market, which too often seems bifurcated between bare-bones, entry-level options and more-advanced management tools. But it faces stiff competition from the likes of Ulead and Microsoft. We'll give you the final word after it ships in coming months.
