Adobe has rolled out the updates to its most popular consumer editing tools, Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements. The software version gets upgraded to 12, and brings along some really cool new features.
The main focus of this upgrade happens to be on the mobile front. “Our customers have a lot of photos and videos, and they love to use their home computers to organize them and be creative, but they also want the freedom and flexibility to view, edit and share them on their mobile devices,” said Lea Hickman, vice president, products, Creative Consumer Business, Adobe. “Photoshop Elements 12 and Premiere Elements 12 will provide customers with the best of both worlds, quickly, easily and at their discretion.” The entire mobile platform is driven by Adobe’s less known Revel service.
The new Photoshop Elements 12 program now includes the Content Aware Move tool from Photoshop, a feature that really added a whole new level of convenience for those who use Photoshop. With the tool coming to Photoshop Elements 12, now even who aren’t into Photoshop will be able to tweak their images. Other feature of Photoshop Elements 12 include Guided Edits, One-Click frames and Old Photo Restoration. The Auto Smart Tone feature learns from your editing styles and creates profiles for easy application in future use.
Premiere Elements 12 also gets a host of new features, such as Scores, a collection of 50 odd soundtracks that get automatically regenerated to fit the length of the clip. The sound track is also accompanied by over 250 sound effects that are easy to apply. The Smart Auto Tone feature of Photoshop Elements 12 is also present in Premiere, for a good final colour grade on the footage.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 and Adobe Premiere Elements 12 (Mac and Windows) are immediately available for purchase at www.adobe.com for US$99.99, with upgrade pricing of US$79.99. The Photoshop Elements 12 & Premiere Elements 12 bundle is available now for US$149.99, with upgrade pricing of US$119.99. Adobe Revel is an app available for iOS and Windows devices. The app is free for up to 50 photo or video uploads per month.
It is nice to see Adobe roll out this major update to its Elements line, which has always focused on the novice/average user. Given Adobe’s decision at Max to switch to a subscription based plan for all its products, it is nice to see that the Elements family is still a standalone purchase option, which is a much better option for the average consumer.