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In February, I wrote that “launching Photoshop Elements is a painful process. Startup took about 17 seconds: six bounces of the icon on the dock, then about 11 seconds on the splash screen. This is about the same as Photoshop Elements 4.0, which was running through emulation.” The final version of Photoshop has most definitely improved in this area, beating CS3 for start time, taking about 10 seconds on a cold start, which is very acceptable.
The interface is the same as before. I still feel that it is rather garishly colored, and the choice to completely ignore the Leopard UI in every interface element except for the title bars seems idiotic and makes for a makeshift appearance. Adobe apps have never felt very Mac-native, and this is a step in the wrong direction.
As far as features, you can read my past reviews for what I thought (and think) of Photomerge Faces and Guided and Quick Modes. Where Elements has impressed me this time is in the Photomerge Panorama feature. I wanted to create a panorama of my computer setup, and so, using my tripod, I took 4 shots, purposefully not in a row, so that the pieces of the “puzzle” would be scrambled around. Using the “New Photomerge Panorama” command, I chose the four pictures, and after about 30 seconds of processing, I had the panorama. Not an error. It was amazing, and could be the one reason I keep Elements on this computer to supplement CS3.
Overall, my main gripe with the software, it’s speed has been improved, while my other main gripe, the interface, has not. I much prefer CS3’s interface, but at least Elements is fairly uniform and not incredibly hard to get around in. I recommend this upgrade to anyone running an Intel Mac who needs CS3, anyone on a PowerPC Mac looking for some very full featured editing software on the cheap, and anyone who wants to take advantage of Photomerge’s great features.
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