Reviewing New Features of Photoshop Elements 8 - Worth Upgrading?

The new Recompose tool found in Photoshop Elements 8 is definitely more than just "upgrade fluff." With this tool, you can resize photos to different dimension ratios without noticeable distortion of the main elements of the image. For example, if you have an 8" x 10" photo that you want to show off in a 5" x 5" frame, you can use the Recompose tool to resize the photo without cropping and end up with an image that still shows off the entire scene without distorting the main subjects.

This flexible tool can also be used to remove distracting objects in a photo during the resizing process. With the help of the Protect and Remove brushes, you can mark the items in the image that you want to keep as well as those that you want to remove, giving even more control over the recomposition process.

The Recompose tool gives some amazing results, and its versatility makes several types of editing projects go smoother and much faster. In fact, this new feature alone may be enough reason to move up to version 8.

Technically, the new People Recognition tool in Photoshop Elements 8 is just one of the many enhancements of the improved Organizer, but it's significant enough to talk about separately – especially with all the emphasis placed on face tagging nowadays.

For the most part, the People Recognition tool does a good job. You can direct the utility to scan your library and tag any faces found in your photos. Occasionally, the automated scanner won't detect a "face" and you will have to manually select the person if you want to apply a tag.

After applying a few tags to faces, the People Recognition tool will actually start making suggestions when similar faces appear. This suggestion feature is fairly decent and improves quite a bit as more faces are labeled and the application has more data to use.

The Organizer that pulls together work from Photoshop Elements, Premiere Elements, and Photoshop.com has received a much-needed overhaul. The new Auto-Analyzer will scan your files as you import them, applying Smart Tags to help you search your library easier. In addition, you can use the People Recognition utility described in the previous section to identify and label any faces in your digital photos, allowing you to search your collection for specific people.

In addition, if you use Photoshop.com, you can sync your photo and video collection across multiple computers from within the Organizer. Not only does this let you backup your library online, but it also makes it easy to access and save your work, no matter which computer you happen to be using at the time.