The feature's saving grace is that it's certainly no worse than Apple's equivalent in iPhoto. More annoyingly, sometimes it doesn't prompt you at all. Most of the time, it prompts you with the question 'who is this?', so you have to select a name yourself. If, however, the majority of your photos are rather rough, the People Recognition feature just doesn't have a clue. In practice, this feature works reasonably well for spot-on, full-face photos with perfect clarity and rich colour. The program then analyses your other photos and identifies them accordingly - in theory, anyway. To do this, you start by enabling People Recognition in the Elements Organizer and entering names for faces in several images. Elements 8 is supposed to be able to identify whose faces they are (see the example below). Much like modern digital cameras, previous versions of Elements could identify the 'face' areas in images. For some reason, this always caused the affected part of the background to look slightly skewed or twisted. We were pleasantly surprised at how seamless the backgrounds were after the Recompose process, but less impressed when we removed parts of the image. There are limitations, of course, most notably when the subject matter is already fairly close, causing distortion to creep in. In fact, you can mark up people to remove from the image as you drag on the Recompose handles. If the program's automatic guesswork proves unsatisfactory, you can manually mark up which parts of the image to preserve and which to eliminate (as shown in the example below). Using the Recompose function in Elements 8, you can push them closer together without distorting their appearance. Say you've taken a photo of two people standing apart from each other. Elements 8 offers a remedy for poorly composed photos that lets you eliminate the background bits you don't want. In the real world of last-minute holidays and nights in the pub, we just shoot what we can and hope for the best. Good photography is all about composition, apparently.
But the freedom this feature affords is brilliant: all you have to do is rattle off a couple of snaps each time - one with the flash on, and one without - in the knowledge that Elements 8 will sort it all out later. If the shots aren't strongly similar in composition, you can get some odd-looking mixes. Even better results can be achieved if you've taken three or more alternative shots. The program, however, provides a means to align the multiple shots manually, and you can designate the over- and under-exposed areas manually too, if necessary. Naturally, the best results are obtained if you can persuade your friend to keep as still as possible, while doing the same yourself while holding the camera. In Elements 8, the Photomerge Exposure feature combines the two to produce a well-balanced result across the whole picture (see the example above). Instead, take two quick shots: one over-exposed to capture your friend's shadowy face, and the other under-exposed to capture the well-lit background.
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With experience and expertise, you could work out how to balance the two with some nifty camera work, but, in the time it takes you to do that, the moment will have passed and your friend will be getting bored. Imagine you're taking a snap of a friend whose face is in shadow while the background is sun-drenched. You can also get it bundled with Premiere Elements 8 for about £115. Photoshop Elements 8 is available now for around £75. A powerful browser utility, the Elements Organizer, helps you preview and sort out your pictures and other media files, while the main Photoshop Elements program is used for handling the editing work.
A clutch of new features bolsters the package, allowing for more single-click image adjustments, and automatic identification of the people in your images.įor readers unfamiliar with Photoshop Elements, it essentially comprises a couple of programs designed to make it easy - and fun - for home users to organise, correct, enhance and generally get the best out of their digital photo collection. All the signs are here that October is nearly upon us: the evenings are getting cooler, the leaves are starting to fall, and Adobe has announced a new edition of Photoshop Elements, version 8.
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