The Home screen

What was referred to in Adobe Photoshop Elements 2018 as the eLive screen is now the Home screen. It's the first thing you see when Elements starts and, like its predecessor, is there to provide users with creative inspiration on how to edit images, embark on creative projects, and how to best use its many Auto Creations (circled in red). You can use it for learning how to accomplish basic editing tasks and for fun activities such as creating YouTube memes, automated slideshows, movies, and more, simply by clicking any of the pictorial links on the Home screen—which then take you to an online tutorial hosted by Adobe.

The screen displays a short (text) list of previously opened files, which is a nice feature, plus shortcuts to open the photo editor, the media browser (called the Organizer), and the video editor, plus links to Adobe, Facebook, and Twitter:

As you can see, this is the new Elements 2020 Home screen. You can use it as a source of creative inspiration, but also as the go-to screen to open previously edited files or to start one of the application links: Organizer, Photo Editor, or Video Editor.

It's important to note that if you've not bought Elements and Premiere Elements together as a bundle, clicking the third icon, Video Editor, will prompt you to download and 'try' Premiere Elements. Buying the bundle saves a fair chunk of money and makes sense because so many of us shoot video and stills.

If you are already using Premiere Elements 2020, you will notice several new features, including Smart Tags to help organization, simplified noise reduction, a sky replacement tool, and more. But those are topics for another book...

Photoshop Elements users will note that there are now more Auto Creations that appear on the lower left-hand side of the screen. These include the Pattern Brush, Black and White Selection, Depth of Field, and Painterly effects, as seen in the following screenshot. Not a massive enhancement on its own, but, as a source of inspiration, it's always interesting to see how your own images look incorporated into different creative styles that you might never have considered previously:

Because the Home page is linked to Adobe's servers, it also provides access to the Help menu, plus thousands of pages of inspiration covering a massive range of topics, from basic tone enhancement and scrapbooking to professional standard retouching techniques and more.