Page 3 - Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 review

Sharing photographs is the new buzz phrase and to this end PE5 has a plethora of features including; Photo Layout - create multi page documents of pictures, DVD and CD jackets and labels, Album pages, greeting cards and slide shows. Slide shows can be fully customised and include numerous transition effects, pan & zoom, backgrounds, clip art etc. The slide show can be saved as a wmv movie file or as a PDF.

The highlight of Photoshop Elements 5 has to be Flash Gallery, this enables you to create stunning looking animated web galleries of photographs, you can also load them up to Adobe’s new Showcase web server, which is a free service. There are numerous pre-defined templates to choose from and better still you can customise the gallery colours to compliment your images or an existing web site.

Flash Galleries will allow you to drag virtual slides about on your screen

Click here to view the above Flash enabled slides in your browser

For those photographers who love motor drives, Adobe has added a Flipbook feature. View your shots in rapid sequence and then create a movie. If your into video editing then why not incorporate the sequence into a movie (4:3 aspect), the effect may look jerky, but it’s great fun to use.

Flibook frame

By default PE5 automatically fixes red eyes on files that are imported from digital camera, files and folders or mobile phones, you can turn this feature off via Preferences, but if your importing files from folders then look out for the small radio button on the Get Photos window, which will allow you to turn of the Fix Red Eyes feature. The fix red eye also works on red polka dot dresses.

Pros.

• Flash based Photo galleries for stylish presentations
• B/W and Correct Camera Distortions filters
• Excellent templates for a variety of projects
• Price – especially the bundle which includes Elements 3

Cons.

• The Organiser can be sluggish (5500 files used in this test)
• Sombre grey interface
• Layer masks are still missing

Verdict

Most hobbyist photographers may never need all the features that are incorporated in Photoshop CS2, so Elements 5 may be the answer. Elements 5 may not be a significant improvement over version 4, but it’s still an exceptional application at a fraction of the price of Photoshop CS2. I haven’t found many things that can’t be done with Elements - all the images used in this review were optimised in PE5

Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 for Windows £69.99 (excl VAT).

Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 plus Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 for Windows is available as a bundle for £99.99. (excl VAT)