My idea of a worthwhile upgrade embraces two specific approaches: major feature enhancements that make your life easier, or updates that take the weak spots of a previous release and make them go away, thereby making your life easier.

Adobe has done an excellent job of delivering the later in Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 ($51), for Windows and Macintosh. An even better deal is a bundle of Elements and Photoshop Album 2.0 for $78, although that is Windows-only.

I liked Elements 1.0 for the smart way Adobe looked at the full version of Photoshop, a mainstay of graphics professionals, focused on the 10-20% of the features "ordinary" users would actually employ and made them available via a friendly interface. But there were some bugs -- for example, I use a left-handed mouse, and a number of tutorial features didn't work when the mouse was set that way. Also, a little too much of the Industrial Strength interface was still there.

With 2.0, problems solved.

The interface has been made even more user friendly. A new "Quick Fix" feature groups all the major picture adjustments a user normally would make -- brightness, color correction, focus, and rotation into one handy dialog box with a "before" and "after" display. The long-standing Photoshop color variations dialog -- it shows you what the picture will look like if you adjust hues and shadings -- has been updated to the same format. And both are now buttons on the main toolbar.

Paint "brush" choices in the interface are now more clear with respect to the effects they will produce. Choosing a tool now more reliably links to a "hints" box explaining what the tool does. New in 2.0 is a Selection Brush tool, which permits you to select parts of a picture for modification by freehand with a mouse or tablet. The thumbnail File Browser is much improved, with a Windows Explorer type design.

1.0's slightly confusing "Recipe" box has been replaced by a more logical "Tutorial" item on the Help menu.

Elements is that rarest of modern day software creatures -- a cross-platform application that comes in the box that way. The same disk will install either version. This makes the product an exceptionally good value for users who have a mix of Windows and Mac machines.

As the screen shot above shows, the two versions look the same and work the same on both platforms, making for a learning curve of zero if a Windows user needs to work on the Mac or vice versa. File interchange between platform is seamless as Photoshop's PSD format is not platform dependent and, of course, the same is true for JPG, BMP, GIF, TIFF and all the other major graphic formats.

The only major disappointment for me was that the "Healing Brush" -- a retouching tool that can fix things from scratches in a photo, to wrinkles and bad complexion in a photo subject, which is included in the full versions of Photoshop -- did not find its way to Elements 2.0. Elements' target audience arguably needs this help more than graphics pros.

But be that as it may, Photoshop Elements 2.0 is the graphics editor of choice for business and home users who aren't graphics professionals.

(c) 2004 Al Gordon.

In addition to his computer interests, Al Gordon is a principal in the Boston-area strategic consulting firm, Mary Fifield Associates, www.maryfifieldassociates.com.

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You can reach Al Gordon at:

al@tnpcnewsletter.com

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