Chapter 1: Photoshop Elements Features Overview
Adobe Photoshop Elements is a pixel-based graphics photo-editing application that was first released in 2001. Its appearance followed on from an entry-level program called Photoshop LE, a light edition of Photoshop, which was a product made available mostly for students and teachers, and sometimes bundled with other hardware products at the point of sale. If you count its LE predecessor, Photoshop Elements 2020 is now in its twentieth version.
Initially, Photoshop Elements was released as a basic, entry-level tool for the consumer; mums and dads trying to get their collective heads around digital technology. But over the years, it has dramatically expanded its feature set, inheriting many significant professional-level tools from its more complex sibling, Adobe Photoshop.
So, how different is Elements from Photoshop? Interestingly, Adobe maintains that the principal difference between the two is that Elements is still essentially a screen-based, RGB (Red, Green and Blue) program, whereas Photoshop CC is designed to convert RGB files for work in the commercial CMYK print space—making it the go-to graphics application for all professionals working in print.
However, the market has changed significantly in the past 15 years, with so many more businesses trading online; therefore, the demand for print-ready conversions has reduced significantly. In my own experience, I have found that any good commercial print shop will gladly convert Elements' RGB files to its preferred CMYK color space, usually with only a nominal prepress charge, thus enabling everything produced out of Elements to be commercially printed to the highest degree of quality.
In this version, you'll find an astonishing range of sophisticated tools, features, and capabilities packed into a very affordable editing package, making it not only a serious professional tool but also one that is simpler to use than Photoshop CC.
As you will quickly come to appreciate, this software is, in fact, made up of two separate applications and a number of different modes designed to address different user experience levels, all rolled into one bundle called Elements. Although it has technically evolved from other products, such as Adobe Photoshop LE and Photoshop Album, it's now an incredibly powerful and cohesive standalone tool designed for transforming photographic images, while remaining both affordable and fairly easy to use.
What's important to understand is that it's not necessary to know everything about this application to succeed at producing beautiful results—you can use just one, or a combination, of its components to produce impressive edits, depending on your experience, creativity, and, indeed, your drive for editing perfection.
Because Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020 is made up of several quite different parts, treat this first chapter very much as a general overview. Once you better understand what each section offers, you'll find it significantly easier to navigate the various features, which, in turn, will enable you to produce great results more efficiently.
What you will see in this first section:
- New features in Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020
- Importing files and the Organizer
- Storing your edit information in the Catalog
- Editing modes, including the Quick Edit, Guided Edit, and Expert Edit modes
- The Create and Share menus explained
- Working with video and Premiere Elements
- Working with Panels, the Panel Bin, and Panel functionality