When Photoshop Elements 9 was released in 2010, it included several cool new features, most of them drawn from big brother Photoshop, and it was hard to imagine where the consumer image editor could go from there. However, Adobe has somehow managed to add another set of impressive new features to Photoshop Elements 10.
You can now paint effects directly onto your images using the Smart Brush, filling in selected areas with a range of textures or other images. This allows you paint in a new background or change the look of a specific object in your image. Guided Edits is a wizard-like interface that helps you apply the program’s wide range of photo enhancement tools quickly and easily.
Curving and Flowing Text is a powerful new tool to have text follow a vector curve anywhere on your image, normally found only in high-end illustration software. Face recognition when searching has been expanded, allowing you to find photos with the same or similar objects of any kind, which is very cool. There’s also better crop guides, easier searching for duplicate images, new templates and more.
This is a great update. Sure the regular version of Photoshop (CS5) offers a lot more for advanced users, though at the very hefty premium. For most users, however, Elements has everything you'll ever need from an image editor, for just A$146. It's even better value — if you need video-editing too — when bundled with Premiere Elements 10 for $218.
