Editing in Adobe Premiere Elements 4
and Photoshop Elements 6
by Douglas Dixon
www.manifest-tech.com
(See also
Summary - Premiere Elements 4)
(See also
Summary - Photoshop Elements 6)
Adobe has released the
latest installments in its Elements suite of
consumer video photo and editing tools:
Adobe Premiere Elements 4 and Adobe
Photoshop Elements 6 (www.adobe.com/go/pse6pre4).
Adobe continues to pull off
a difficult trick with its Elements
applications: providing an accessible
interface for novice editors (at under $100)
that still provides access to the underlying
power and flexibility of its high-end
Premiere and Photoshop CS3 tools (at $799
and $649).
The idea with these
applications is to provide a growth path as
you get more experienced -- so you can start
simply, but then not hit a dead end in the
application as your editing gets more
sophisticated:
- In Premiere Elements,
you can start with simple drag-and-drop
sceneline (storyboard) editing of clips
using Movie Themes to automatically apply
transitions, music, layouts for titles,
credits, and disc menus. Then grow into the
multi-track Timeline, synchronizing multiple
events with overlays, keyframed animation,
and audio mixing.
- In Photoshop Elements,
you can start in the Organizer browsing your
photos and using the one-click Fix tools to
automatically clean up and enhance your
images. Then use the Guided Editing mode to
walk though the steps of improving a photo,
and grow into the full Edit mode to make
more sophisticated adjustments, including
selectively enhancing, retouching flaws, and
even removing unwanted elements.
Premiere Elements 4
and Photoshop Elements 6 were
released for Windows in September 2007. The
pricing is the same as the previous version:
the individual applications are $99.99 each,
or are available together as a bundle for
$149.99 (U.S. estimated street price). A
version of Photoshop Elements for the
Macintosh is expected in early 2008.
- Premiere Elements 4 -
www.adobe.com/products/premiereel -
Press Release
- Photoshop Elements 6 -
www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelwin
-
Press Release
- See earlier article on
Easier Editing with Adobe Premiere Elements
3
- Find related
Adobe articles in the Manifest Tech Blog
The first thing you will
notice about the new Premiere and Photoshop
Elements is the new look -- more subdued,
with a neutral gray background. Adobe found
that too much color splashed around the
interface was distracting to users, and the
plainer background helped images and video
"pop" out more from the background. The
interface still uses color, of course,
especially for the tabs for the major
workspaces. (You also can tweak the
background brightness under Preferences >
User Interface.)
The interface uses the
interlocking panel design from the previous
versions and the Adobe CS3 suite -- just
drag to resize a panel and others adjacent
to it adjust to fit, and click on the header
to collapse a panel. Right-click over a
panel to display its context menu. Photoshop
Elements has a relatively simple layout,
with the two separate Organizer and Editor
windows.
Premiere Elements uses more
panels, listed in the Windows menu, with the
main workspace panels, plus optional panels
like Info and History, plus floating panels
like Audio Meters and Audio Mixer. You also
can Ctrl-drag and drop to rearrange the
panels (use Window > Show Docking Headers).
The new interface uses a
similar layout across both applications,
with the Task bar on the right showing
color-coded tabs for the major steps in
working on your media. Each tab displays a
Workspace with tools and options to carry
out the corresponding task. (Premiere
Elements has Edit, Create Menus, Share for;
the Photoshop Elements Organizer uses
Organize, Fix, Create, Share in; and the
Photoshop Elements Editor uses Edit, Create,
Share).
Both applications are more
also tightly integrated, sharing the same
Organizer, with a common database of media
files and attributes accessible from either
application. You can sort your video, audio,
and photos by dates and ratings, and use
visual tagging to categorize your media by
categories and keywords including people,
places, and events.
Both applications also now
provide a Sharing Center to centralize
options for exporting and sharing your
photos and movies, including files on
computers, uploading to share on the Web,
and burning to disc.
So let's walk though editing
a movie in Premiere Elements 4,
focusing on the key new features (www.adobe.com/products/premiereel).
The main window in Premiere
Elements has three panels: the Tasks panel
at the top right where you access the
workspaces for editing and sharing your
movie, the Monitor panel at the top left to
preview and edit clips, and the My Project
panel along the bottom where you assemble
and edit your movie in the Sceneline
(storyboard) or Timeline.
The Tasks panel
reconfigures as you click the Tabs to
display appropriate options, including
presets and parameters that you can
customize.
The Monitor panel is
not just for viewing clips -- you also can
edit clips directly in the panel, to apply
effects, create titles, and position overlay
images and text. It also becomes the Disc
Layout panel when you are working on DVD
menus.
Premiere Elements starts in
the Edit workspace in the Tasks
panel, ready to import and work on your
video clips. Use the Organizer view to
browse and tag your shared media database,
and the Project view to import and access
media used in the current project. Click to
the Get Media view to import clips from DVD,
external devices, camcorders, local files,
and the Internet (Adobe gallery). Premiere
Elements also has a cool Stop Motion import
feature.
To make a simple movie, drag
clips to the Sceneline (storyboard)
to arrange them in order. You than can drag
and drop transitions between them, effects
to enhance to enhance or distort the video,
and animated title slides. Within the
Sceneline, you also can add narration and
background music tracks under the main
video.
Sceneline
Even better, click Themes
for the new Movie Themes feature, to turn
your sequence of scenes into a polished
movie, automatically applying transitions,
music, layouts for titles, credits, and disc
menus. These can be event-based (Wedding and
Birthday) or style-based (Silent Film and
Music Video). The result appears in the
project timeline, where you can continue to
customize and edit it.
There's also a new Edit to
the Beat feature to create slide shows and
movies that match your music. It
automatically detects the tempo of the
musical soundtrack, and syncs each scene
with the beats.
Then for more advanced
editing, click over to the Timeline
to synchronize and mix up to 99 tracks of
video and audio. Use the new Audio Mixer
sliders to adjust the relative volumes of
dialog, background music, and sound effect
tracks.
Timeline
Apply hundreds of
customizable transitions and special
effects, organized in different categories
-- version 4 adds some 20 new transitions
including 3D Transformations and Art Blends,
and 10 new effects including Old Film,
Airbrush, and Earthquake.
Use the new Image Stabilizer
filter to smooth out footage from a shaky
camera, and the new Blue/Green Screen keying
effect to automatically detect and remove
blue / green screen background. Apply new
animated titles to bounce, spin, and zoom,
enhanced with shadows, glows.
If you're editing a movie to
author to DVD, you can add chapter / scene
index markers in the timeline as you edit,
and then click over to the Create Menus
tab to select a menu design preset. Premiere
Elements automatically builds a main menu
and scene index menus based on your clips.
You then go in and customize the designs,
editing text, moving and changing elements,
and replacing the background image/video and
audio. You can continue to tweak these as
desired as you continue to edit your movie,
and then Premiere Elements will use them
when you're ready to burn a disc.
Create Menus
When you are done editing,
move on to the Share tab to export in
a variety of forms and formats. Select
Personal Computer for presets to export for
viewing on PCs (DV AVI, MPEG, Windows Media,
QuickTime and Adobe Flash Video). Use Tape
export to record to DV or HDV. And use
Mobile Phones and Players to export in
formats for mobile devices including the
Apple iPod and iPhone, audio podcasts
(H.264, MP3) and a variety of media players,
smartphones, and mobile phones (Windows
Media, H.264, 3GP).
When working with high-def
video (Premiere Elements supports HDV but
not AVCHD), you can export to files in HD,
or burn your movie to disc in either DVD or
now also in HD in Blu-ray Disc format.
And for sharing online, you
can export in Adobe Flash video format and
then upload directly to YouTube, or via FTP
to a personal website.
Premiere Elements offers
presets for each format at different
resolutions and quality / bandwidth, which
you then can customize with the video and
audio formats. You also can save your own
QuickShare presets to reuse.
Top
Keeping with the Elements
theme of simplicity for beginners plus more
power as you get more sophisticated, instead
of cramming both a media file organizer and
an image editing application into a single
interface. Photoshop Elements 6 has two
separate components, the Organizer and the
Editor (www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelwin).
Adobe also installs the
Photoshop Downloader module to
automatically assist in importing new photos
when you attach a camera to your system.
Today's automated photo processing software
has improved so much that Photoshop Elements
even can detect and remove red eye
automatically when you import photos.
Use the Organizer to
find, organize, view, and share photos, and
make quick fixes with automated clean-up of
entire photos. That's all a beginner needs.
Then move on to the
Editor to refine photos with guided or
advanced editing, including a variety of
powerful tools and effects, plus layers.
The Organizer automatically
organizes your photos by date. You then can
categorize them by assigning star ratings
and keyword tags, to search later. Photoshop
Elements will even automatically search for
photos containing faces, so you can tag them
with a simple drag and drop.
You can browse your photos
by date and various criteria, zooming in and
out on the thumbnails and comparing shots
side by side. To visually review new photos,
switch to the Full Screen mode to step
through a set of photos you just imported,
identifying and tagging the ones that you
want to edit and share.
The Organizer has a built-in
Fix tab to apply one-click automated
enhancement to the entire photo (Auto Smart
Fix, Color, Levels, Contrast, Sharpen, Red
Eye Fix), plus has a Crop option. Often this
is good enough to quickly print or share an
image, without needing to go on to the
Editor.
Organizer - Fix - Automated
correction for entire photo
You can further manage your
collections by grouping photos in Stacks of
similar shots, or create virtual Albums of
related shots (including new Smart Albums
based on a search criteria). When you apply
a Fix to a photo, Photoshop Elements also
automatically creates a Version Set to keep
track of both the original photo plus the
edited version.
Then use the Create
and Share tabs to design printed and
electronic projects and share your photo
creations in print, on disc, in electronic
form, or though online services. The same
Create and Share options are also available
in the Editor, which also has an Artwork
content library for decorating your photos.
The Editor actually offers
three different editing modes:
- Quick Edit - Auto
Fix options from the Organizer, plus manual
sliders.
- Guided Edit - New
step-by-step assistance to perform common
tasks (Basic Photo Edits, Lighting and
Exposure, Color Correction, Guided
Activities touch ups, Photomerge).
- Full Edit - Editing
with the complete toolset, effects,
controls, and layers, including the Spot
Healing Brush and Healing Brush to retouch
flaws, and a new Quick Selection Tool to
select and adjust with simple clicks.
Editor - Quick Edit -Auto Fix
options
The enhanced Photomerge
Panorama feature automatically stitches
together multiple photos. The new Photomerge
Group Shot option creates a single cohesive
group shot that combines the best elements
from series of shots, so everybody can have
a good facial expression. And the new
Photomerge Faces lets you have fun combining
the eyes, noses, and other features from
different faces.
The Create tab offers
a variety of options to create projects and
use online services. You can print out a
photo book, calendar, collage, greeting
card, and flipbook; burn VCD or DVD discs
with labels; and create and electronic
online gallery or slide show. Or use the
built-in connections to online services to
order prints, greeting cards, or photo
stamps.
The new Sharing Center
then offers a profusion of options for
sharing your photos, physically and
electronically. Besides saving as photos and
animated slideshows, you can order prints or
burn to CD/DVD, export as a PDF slide show,
or send as e-mail or upload to an online
gallery.
Adobe Premiere Elements 4
and Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 successfully
bridge the gap from consumer to enthusiast
video and photo editing. The updated
interfaces are more accessible for novices,
with well-organized layouts and clear
options. And the new Sharing modes open up a
broad range of options for sharing through
files, physical goods (prints, discs), and
the Internet.
The Organizer mode in
Photoshop Elements is a solid tool by
itself, with handy options to review, tag,
and quickly fix up sets of photos. And the
Editor mode then opens up much of the more
advanced capability of full Photoshop CS,
with the help of the new Guided Editing
assists to get you started.
Similarly, you can start out
in Premiere Elements by organizing clips in
the Sceneline, and use the new Movie Themes
to automatically apply polished movie
styles. Then graduate to Timeline editing,
with multiple tracks of overlays, effects,
and audio mixing.
However, the Elements
applications are not tools for the
occasional hobbyist user who just wants to
mess with a few photos and clips and be done
with it. These tools are designed for people
who want to get involved with video and
photo editing -- so that it's worth the time
to organize your collection of clips, and to
dig deeper into the options to become more
and more proficient and sophisticated with
the results you can achieve.
Visit the Adobe website to
download trial versions to try these out.
Adobe has provided the elements of your
success, wrapping up the power of its
professional applications so you can get
started and grow with your own digital
media.
Manifest
Technology®
Copyright 1999-2008,
Douglas Dixon, All Rights Reserved
Manifest Technology is a registered
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