BetteR PHOtOGRAPHY MARCH 201546
Sibling Rivalries
Would you pay more for less features? Or, has Adobe become the snake that eats its
own tail with Adobe Photoshop Elements 13. Aditya Nair fi nds out.W
hile Adobe Photoshop CC
has remained my tool of
choice over the years for
editing images, it is always
fun to test Photoshop
Elements. Working in the shadows of it more
illustrious older brothers, Photoshop CC
and Lightroom, this simplifi ed version has
almost every feature a photographer would
be interested without being intimidating.
Over the years, most features from the
eldest sibling have found their way down
to Elements. Unfortunately, that seemed
to be the biggest drawback of Photoshop
Elements 13. Looking at the latest update,
it seems apparent that Adobe is out of
ideas what to introduce in this version.
The headlining acts in this version are a less
than stellar Photomerge tool for creating
image composites and a intelligent Crop toolthat suggests four different cropping options
for your photographs.A Simple Design, Retained
PSE 13 is divided into Organizer and Editor
modes. Think of Organizer as a stripped
down version of Adobe Bridge, in that it
lets you import and organise your fi les for
editing. However, a major fl aw for me was
that I was unable to sort fi les by type.
If you choose to, you can give PSE 13
access to your Facebook account to help
it identify and tag people in photos.
Geotagging images is also available which
displays images on a map. Although, it is not
as effective as Lightroom or Bridge, it is still
exceptionally good when you compare it to
other paid consumer photo editing software
like Corel PaintShop Pro that are available in
the market today.testWEIGHTAGE OF
PARAMETERSFeatures
ease of Use
Performance30%
40%30%BetteR PHOtOGRAPHY46
BetteR PHOtOGRAPHYtestHaving run out
of ideas with
new features
to add, Adobe
seems to be
focusing making
better images
for sharing on
social networks.Adobe Photoshop Elements 13
MARCH 2015