Photoshop Elements
The big focus lately has been on designing the app (actually both of them) to do the heavy lifting for the user. Gone are the days when beginners had to spend an hour outlining the subject of their photo with the pen tool to select it properly. The app does that sort of thing for you. They’ve also added a number of new guided edits. Basically, these are just wizards that take users through a number of steps and program features to help them get a pre-defined result. The news ones include:- Turning a photo into text
- Effects collages
- Speed pan effects
- Creating your own digital frames
- Painting effects onto photos
Premiere Elements
Premiere Elements is also bringing more automation and automatic detection into the mix. First up is the fact that they added face detection to their pan, zoom, and trim effects, to make sure the faces stay in the picture. For music, there’s a new feature they’re calling Remix, which will automatically remix a song down (or up) to the length of your video. I haven’t had a chance to personally test this feature, but it is very interesting to me. I mean, an algorithm mixing instrumental music is one thing, but how would it handle vocals? Okay, I’m actually really curious about that one. Next, we have Haze Removal. It first introduced as its own effect in Photoshop Elements, and now you can do it with video. That’s… all there is to it. Lastly, there’s now a feature to make it easier for people to make video collages. As it’s something that would usually require a bunch of manual positioning, I kind of wish they’d put this into the regular version of Premiere.Conclusion
These apps come with the usual hefty price tag, so they’re best suited to someone who is doing this stuff a lot, like a hobbyist, or a particularly dedicated relative. That said, if that’s you or your client, then this feels like a generally solid update to decent consumer software. You should get lots of likes.Ezequiel Bruni
Ezequiel Bruni is a web/UX designer, blogger, and aspiring photographer living in Mexico. When he’s not up to his finely-chiselled ears in wire-frames and front-end code, or ranting about the same, he indulges in beer, pizza, fantasy novels, and stand-up comedy.
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