Price Tag:  $179.99 for Photoshop Elements, Premiere Elements & Photoshop.com PLUS membership
Official URL: www.photoshop.com
Rating:

Photoshop and Premiere Elements 7 have so much to cover that we’re breaking our review of this software into several parts. This part will cover the “SHARE”  features of Photoshop and Premiere Elements 7, as well as Photoshop.com features.

Photoshop and Premiere Elements 7 are the first easy to use image and video editing software that take professional-level tools and make them accessible to the rest of us. At an affordable $179.99, this Photo + Video editing package packs a great punch and offers many of the features that Photoshop and Premiere Pro offer to the Pros, but with a much friendlier interface and with a real focus on sharing.

Along with Elements 7, Adobe has developed a new service called “photoshop.com” This service is a backup and photo hosting service that is amazingly simple to use and that offers some awesome features, including an integrated “Photoshop Express” which is a web-based “lite” version of Photoshop that you can use to do some quick edits of your photos from a friend’s house or web cafe.

SHARING

Photoshop (PSE) and Premiere (PRE) Elements both have a “SHARE” tab that covers a wide range of different options for getting your photos and videos out to friends, family, and photo and video hosting, printing and gallery services.

Integrated Sharing (PSE)

The “SHARE” tab that is integrated into Photoshop Elements offers multiple ways to share your work: Online Album, Email Attachments, Photo Mail, Print, Order Prints, CD/DVD, PDF Slideshow, Kodak Easyshare Gallery, SmugMug Gallery, CEIVA Digital Photo Frame, and Flickr. Most of the sharing methods allow creation of “Quick Share Flows” which remember the settings you chose and which allows you to quickly and easily share your files using only a few clicks of your mouse button.

Online Album: Choosing this option allows you to create albums and then share to Photoshop.com, FTP or CD/DVD. You can choose the gallery template from a fairly long list of different templates. If you choose to upload to Photoshop.com you will be allowed the opportunity to set the viewing options before uploading, and choose whether you want to notify your friends via email of the new photos.

Email Attachments: Choosing this sharing option will allow you to choose from a list of mail software installed on your computer. If you don’t use Outlook or any of the installed email applications you can choose the Adobe email service. This allows you to enter your name and email address, and Adobe will send the images for you. You can choose size and quality, enter a message and choose recipients from your address book. If you use the Adobe email service you will have to confirm your email address before you can send photos. To do this, Adobe will send you an email with a verification code. Copy this and paste it into Photoshop where it’s requested, and your photo email will pop up so that you can preview and edit it. Click send and it will be sent. If you use your own mail software no verification will be needed.

Photo Mail: As with the email attachment option, this will request that you choose a contact from your address book. You will be asked to choose stationary from a long list of fun and creative “stationary” options that include animals, simple frames, sports, family motifs, party & special occasions, travel, and other categories. Once you have chosen your stationary you can customize the layout by sizing the images and choosing how their captions will show. You can also change fonts and add drop-shadows. When you’re done, an email will be created. If this is the first time you’ve used the Adobe emailer you might need to confirm your address. Otherwise simply click “Send” and your photo mail will be on its way. It can take a little while for it to arrive, most of the photo mails that I sent took 5-20 minutes to get to their recipient.

CD/DVD: This allows you to easily publish your photos to CD or DVD. The whole process happens from within Photoshop Elements and no additional CD burning software is necessary. This can easily be used for backups as well as sharing. “Sonic Solutions” provides the CD and DVD burning integration.

Print: Printing from Photoshop Elements is more than simply sending a picture to your printer. You can choose to print an individual picture, contact sheets, or “photo packages”. If you choose individual prints you can choose the size of the photo, how many photos should be printed per sheet, and whether you want to crop the photo to the size of the paper. If you choose “contact sheets” you can choose the number of columns (1-9), and choose which text items you want to appear near the thumbnails: Date, Caption, Filename, and Page Numbers. If you choose “Picture Package” you can choose a layout (different sizes), and choose the border for your photos. You can also choose to fill the page with the first photo (this will print multiple copies of each photo) and/or crop to fit.

PDF Slideshow: Clicking this option turns the sidebar into a PDF slideshow options page. You can drag items onto the items list, choose the photo size and quality, name your PDF attachment, create a message, choose your recipient from your address book and send the PDF slideshow as an email attachment. If the attachment is over 1MB you are prompted to consider using a CD or other delivery method instead of email.

Misc. Other Options: If you choose “Order Prints” or to publish to any of the gallery services such as Kodak, SmugMug or Flickr you will be prompted to sign up for a service. (Order Prints links to Shutterfly)

Integrated Sharing (PRE)

The Share tab of Premiere Elements offers a different variety of “Share” options than does Photoshop Elements.

Disc: This interface allows you to burn your video to DVD or Blu-Ray discs from within Premiere Elements. It allows you to choose from presets of: NTSC Dolby DVD, NTSC Widescreen Dolby DVD, PAL Dolby DVD, or PAL Widescreen Dolby DVD. Quality can be set with a slider, or you can use a “FIt contents to DVD” toggle. You can also choose to burn to a folder, which allows you to create the “DVD” on one computer and do the actual burning on another. This is great if you don’t have a DVD or Blu-Ray recorder and want to create on one computer and burn on another.

Online: This interface allows you to share to YouTube or FTP. If you choose the Youtube option it pre-loads flash presets for Youtube, if you choose FTP you have a bit more control. Using this Share method will compress the video and upload it. I had a few glitches with uploading to Youtube, but it seems to have been related to Youtube outages. If your upload fails, try again later. Chances are there was a network problem or Youtube was overloaded.

Personal Computer: The Personal Computer export option is probably the most versatile, and many of these options can also be used to export for the web if you prefer to use a format other than flash video. The options are: Adobe Flash Video, MPEG, DV AVI, Windows Media, and Quicktime. Each format under the PC export option has a brief description for what you might find the format useful for. Each format also has an “Advanced” settings button that opens up a new window with a dizzying array of options to set for the videos. This extra control is awesome!

Mobile Phones and Players: This section has a range of pre-sets for different popular models of phone and media player including: Apple  iPod and iPhone, Creative Zen, Microsoft Zune, and Sony PSP . “Generic” options such as “Pocket PC”, “Smart Phone”, “Mobile Phone” and “Podcast” are also available.  Each option has a variety of pre-sets and advanced options to choose from.

Tape: This option allows you to record your video to DV or HDV tape. You will need to have a recording device attached before accessing this interface.

PHOTOSHOP.COM

Photoshop.com is a new service offered to users of Adobe Elements 7. At its core it is an Elements-integrated photo backup and sharing service, but it’s also so much more. Photoshop partners such as Shutterfly, Flickr, Youtube and others to offer discounts and integration that make both backing up and sharing your digital files easy. On top of that, they offer video tutorials, free assets for your projects, and more.

Basic membership to Photoshop.com is free and offers 2GB of storage.  “Plus” membership requires that you own Photoshop or Premiere Elements 7, and the cost is based on the amount of storage.Additional gigabytes can be purchased on a yearly basis. This storage can be used for either backup or photo sharing, or a combination of both.

WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT

There are several feature that stand out for me.

1. Photoshop.com encourages both private backup of files and sharing of files. Most services focus on one or the other.
2. Owners of a gallery can choose to share the files with everyone, with friends only, or keep them completely private. They can take it a step further and choose to allow or deny the ability to print and download photos. This is set per album, and it defaults to “Private” to prevent accidental sharing of photos. This is a MUCH better workflow than many sites which require that you upload images as public and then make them private after they’ve already been shared with the world for some number of minutes.
3. Photoshop.com has an “Express” version of Photoshop built in. This offers the most used features of Photoshop and makes it easy for even a total computer neophyte to perform a variety of edits and creative embellishments. Photoshop Express (PSX) offers the most commonly used retouching features with push-button ease, and is available to anyone with a Photoshop.com account. I’ve already used this feature to make a few adjustments to photos from a computer at the library. It’s awesome.
4. With Photoshop.com PLUS membership you have access to tutorials, themes and special effects. New interactive online templates are delivered right to your software.

PHOTOSHOP EXPRESS

This “Lite” version of Photoshop requires a web browser with a current version of the Flash plugin installed. If you meet those requirements you immediately have access to an awesome range of features including: rotate, crop, resize, autocorrect, adjust exposure, remove red-eye, touchup, adjust saturation, adjust white balance, adjust highlights, adjust saturation, create a fill light, soften focus, sharpen, “Pop color”, adjust hue, convert to black and white, tint, sketch and distort. Each of these tools is applied using a series of thumbnails or color options that appear to the top of your photo, and that allow you to preview the effect before applying it. It’s the easiest photo editing software I’ve ever encountered. A new “Decorate” beta allows you to add text, cartoon speech and thought bubbles, sticky notes, party decorations, cartoony animals, costumes, sports items and other miscellaneous little decorations. These decorations can be rotated and resized to fit into your photo.

Photoshop Express works with JPEG images up to about 8 megapixels or 2880×2880. You can upload files that are 10MB or up to 6000×6000 pixels, and Photoshop.com will resize the images when you edit them.

ONLINE GALLERY

The Photoshop.com online gallery is flash-based and has a lot of awesome features. If you publish a gallery from Photoshop Elements you will be able to choose from a variety of flash templates, but even the basic template for web-based users is pretty awesome.

Your gallery can be accessed at http://username.photoshop.com once you have signed up. Visitors can choose from 5 different viewing methods that include different thumbnail or slideshow views.. They can adjust the size of the thumbnails. If you have enabled downloading or printing they can grab their favorite images. They can click on the photo to get a pop-up menu of options that allows them (or you) to link to your images or embed them in a website.

You can give the photoshop.com web gallery a test drive at http://www.photoshop.com by clicking the “Test Drive” button. In Test Drive mode you can try out all the different features and fall in love with the service.

PHOTO/VIDEO BACKUP

Separate from the sharing options, Photoshop.com membership includes online backup of your photos and videos. You can choose one catalog of your images and videos to synchronize with Photoshop.com  Since Elements products allow you to create multiple catalogs, what I did was I created a “Backup” catalog and chose this as the catalog to keep in Sync. It watches my “Photos” folder and automatically adds items from that folder to the catalog, making sure that I never lose a photograph.

The Backup part of photoshop.com and Elements is a bit more confusing than the Share aspects. There is a “backup agent” that runs in the system tray with a little green icon that has two white arrows. Right-clicking on this allows you to set how you want the sync to be handled: “Sync only when idle”, pause or stop a sync, or resume syncing. When you pause or stop syncing, the icon goes gray.

I was unable to easily find a way to determine what files had been backed up or synced, or to browse the backed up files online. It was not immediately obvious if I chose a different catalog to backup, if the online backups of the first catalog were deleted.

The backup and sync are very easy in that it happens seamlessly and without the need for much setup. However, it would be great if future versions of Elements had a “Backup” tool that allowed the user to easily browse the backups and confirm what had been backed up. If such a tool exists in this version it’s not very easy to find.

EXTRAS

Tutorials: Photoshop.com membership comes with a lot of awesome video tutorials which you can access from the “Welcome” screen. The Tutorials button launches the “Photoshop.com Inspiration Browser” where you can search for tutorials, browse tutorials, and learn how to do awesome things with your Elements applications.

Tutorials are in video or PDF format. These tutorials are from a variety of sources including Lynda.com, Adobe, Muvipix and other well known sources of education. You can browse by the difficulty level: From beginners to advanced, or by the rating that other users have given the tutorials. You can even submit tutorials of your own!

Discounts & Freebies: Photoshop.com also allows you to take advantage of discounts and freebies offered to their members. These discounts might be for photoshop.com services, educational materials, or print/video services. These offers show up as unobtrusive “tool tip” style popups at the bottom of your screen and you can customize what types of popups you want to be shown.

BOTTOM LINE

The “Share” and “Backup” features of Elements and Photoshop.com are awesome. Photoshop Express is surprisingly powerful and could even be used as an “emergency” editor for Pros. We’d like to see the Backup and Sync options expanded in the future, but in the meantime it offers an excellent peace of mind with convenient integration into our favorite photo and video editing applications.

If you spend a significant amount of time taking photographs or home videos, Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Elements 7 will be an amazing addition to your toolbox for the Photoshop.com, backup and sharing features alone.

Stay tuned for our next articles on Photoshop & Premiere Elements.