MaximumPC 2006 03

reviews TESTED. REVIEWED. VERDICTIZED

80 MA XIMUMPC MARCH 2006

T

he newest update to Photoshop

Elements 4.0 is just a bunny hop

forward from the previous iteration.

Adobe really sweetens the deal, how-

ever, by bundling the home-user edition of

Photoshop with the home-user version of

Premiere — Premiere Elements 2.0.

Don’t take that to mean that Photoshop

Elements doesn’t get any worthwhile new

features; there are quite a few, including

some that had even our designers’ mouths

watering. But the more noteworthy update

is to Premiere Elements. While Premiere

Elements 1.0 was a decent 1.0 version, it

was a rough product.

The most noticeable change to version

2.0 of Premiere Elements is the removal of

the surfeit of palettes that Adobe normally

buries you under. With Premiere Elements

2.0, as you grow or shrink particular pal-

ettes, the other palettes adjust accordingly.

It’s a nice touch that we’d like to see in

other Adobe products.

Premiere Elements 2.0 also now lets

you create your own DVD menu templates.

You can set your background video or

image and customize text but, sadly, but-

ton editing is verboten, as are edits to the

graphical overlays used for the templates.

The templates themselves, however, are

quite polished and exhibit none of the gen-

eral cheesiness you find in competing prod-

ucts. The titling capability of the program

is also enhanced and the stock of included

Adobe fonts is pretty spectacular.

The real gem of Premiere Elements 2.0

is its performance. Because it’s based on

Adobe’s pro-level Premiere Pro 1.5 engine,

Premiere Elements

sings— just sings —

with today’s hardware.

If you’re running a

dual-processor or

dual-core machine,

Premiere Elements’

multithreaded engine

chews through video

in a way that will make

any hardware-head

giggle with joy. Several

of the video transac-

tions are rendered on

the GPU as well, for additional speed.

Rev 2 also allows you to import video

using High Speed USB with cameras that

support the interface (FireWire is also sup-

ported), and the app can encode audio to

the space-saving Dolby Digital 2.0 codec

instead of using uncompressed PCM audio.

Adobe also catches up to the competition by

letting you import VOB files for editing. The

VOBs must be unencrypted, though—so you

won’t be able to edit Sophia Copola out of

The Godfather III, but you can re-import your

movies once you’ve burned them to DVD.

With Photoshop Elements, Adobe mostly

polishes the award-winning image-editing

app. You still get a good taste of Photoshop

without any of the pro-oriented pre-press

stuff. The most notable changes are the

skin-tone tool that lets you easily tweak skin

tone in images, and the Magic Extractor.

Every old Photoshop -hand knows what a

daunting task it can be to clip images from

photos; with the Magic Extractor, you easily

separate your cat, kid, or car from the back-

ground. A similar tool called Magic Selection

Brush lets you easily select objects. Both

tools are far from perfect, but even if you

think the Magic Lasso should be used exclu-

sively by Wonder Woman, you’ll be able to

clip and edit like a Photoshop pro.

Where Photoshop Elements 4.0 is

lacking is in performance. Next to its multi-

threaded sibling, we found ourselves wait-

ing an inordinate amount of time for Magic

Extractor to complete. Admittedly our test

clip is complex, but we were testing on a

machine with four CPU cores and 4GB of

RAM. Uninspiring performance doesn’t out-

weigh the positives of the program, but after

coming off a hardware high from Premiere

Elements 2.0, the lack of any real multi-

threading was a bummer.

Purchased separately, the apps would

total $200, but as a bundle you get both for

$150. That might still seem like a lot, but

between the pair, you’ll be able to handle

95 percent of the image and movie chores

you’ll ever be tasked with.

—GORDON MAH UNG

Adobe Photoshop Elements

with Premiere Elements

Front-row seats for cheap-seat prices

Premiere Elements 2.0 uses the GPU to perform page curls,

and it supports dual-core CPUs for maximum performance.

Photoshop Elements 4.0 now includes a

tweak dedicated to fixing skin tones.

With just a few clicks in Photoshop

Elements, you can clip complicated

objects from photos.

$150, http://www.adobe.com

ELEMENTS BUNDLE

8MM

Dual-core and GPU

support in Premiere

Elements.

VHS^9

Adobe Photo Downloader

can be quite annoying. MA XIMUMPC

KICKASS