Adobe is releasing Photoshop Elements 15 and Premiere Elements 15 today, and this year’s release includes of plenty of powerful new tools that make advanced photo and video editing more approachable.
The new Elements 15 apps start with Adobe Elements Organizer 15, which now features a touch enabled Organizer and Quick Edit mode for touch screen PCs. Mac users will benefit from enhanced search features that let you combine places, events, and popular subjects to locate the right photos. Organization is also improved with smart tags like sunset or dog that are automatically applied to photos. Finally, Organizer 15 includes an upgraded Instant Fix feature that lets you batch edit photos using the one-click method.
Photoshop Elements 15, Adobe’s lightweight but powerful photo editor, adds five new guided edits that take you step-by-step to improve your photos. This brings the total number of guided edits to 45 with the new guided edits including photo text, painterly, effects collage, speed pan, and frame creator.
Here’s how Adobe describes each new guided edit:
- Photo Text: Now you can easily transform any photo into cool visual text and add an embossed look and drop shadows to really make it pop. It’s great for anyone creating collages, scrapbook pages, cards, signs, and more.
- Painterly: Convert your photos into unique works of art. Painterly teaches you how to paint an effect over your subject and then add textures and color themes —perfect for sharing on social media or as a printed keepsake.
- Effects Collage : get artistic by adding multiple effects to a single photo. Tap into multiple templates and themes to choose one that suits your style.
- Speed Pan: Don’t know how to or weren’t able to catch the perfect speed-pan action shot? No problem. This new guided edit adds a motion blur behind your subject to creat e the dramatic effect.
- Frame Creator: A new way to create your own custom frames to complement your favorite photos and they can be added to the existing frame library.
There’s also an impressive new facial feature adjustment tool that easily lets you change squinting eyes or upset faces into bright smiles with open eyes. This will be super useful if you snap the perfect photo except for that one stubborn frowning face. Photoshop Elements 15 upgrades the filter gallery as well so you can discover and tweak filters easily.
For the video editors, Premiere Elements 15 is upgraded with its own new guided edit feature for adding effects to either the full movie or just specific clips. Adobe is also bringing the haze removal tool that we saw introduced in Photoshop Elements 14 last year to Premiere Elements 15 this year. This tool lets you brightness and sharpen footage which adds a dramatic amount of clarity to hazy video.
Premiere Elements 15 also touts a new remix feature that lets you apply music to your video without worrying about the specific duration. Premiere Elements can manipulate the audio without distorting it to fit your movie. There’s now face detection capabilities for Smart Time, Favorite Moments, and Pan and Zoom so Premiere Elements 15 can prioritize footage with people included.
Finally, Adobe has packed an impressive video collage feature into Premiere Elements 15 that lets you feature multiple videos in one frame before sending off to social media. This looks super impressive and should capture anyone’s attention.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 15 and Premiere Elements 15 are available from $119.99 starting today.