Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 and Adobe Premiere Elements 4

Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 and Adobe Premiere Elements 4 is a new package deal from the editing wizards at Adobe. You can still buy the programs separately. But why would you, when you get both photo and video editing software in one box?

I've been shooting and touching up digital photos for years. Photoshop and Photoshop Elements are the first choice for most photographers. It's become a verb too, as in "that picture has been Photoshopped." Photoshop does everything you need, and does it well. And for less money, Photoshop Elements is no slouch, either.

Photoshop Elements 6 looks different for those who have earlier versions. It's changed to a dark-color interface, and there are now tabs to move quickly to the task at hand. Many users will just stick with the Full edit screen. But you can also select the Quick and Guided edit screens; these are a good idea for new users. Others tabs let you Organize, Fix, Create and Share.

Organize lets you put photos into albums, and use keyword tags. Fix is self-explanatory. Create offers many choices including photo book, photo calendar, collage, greeting card and CD/DVD labels. Share choices include online gallery, e-mail attachment, photo mail, and print ordering. Three new Photomerge functions are group shot, faces and panorama.

Skilled Photoshoppers like to edit manually. But for quick and powerful changes, you can select the Auto enhancements: smart fix, levels, contrast, color correction, sharpen and red eye fix. While you could always do a color to black-and-white change, Photoshop Elements 6 takes a more sophisticated approach. Slider controls let you easily darken highlights, lighten shadows and alter midtone contrast.

While Adobe Premiere Elements is powerful, Premiere Elements 4 is no wimpy video editing program like some shareware program you snagged off download.com. This is software a professional could use without being embarrassed. I tested it out using some public domain video clips I grabbed off the Internet Archive (www.archive.org/details/movies).

Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 and Adobe Premiere Elements 4 box

Credit: Adobe

Copyright: Adobe