This morning, Adobe has released updates for its ‘Elements’ Lineup of software, (Photoshop & Premiere), adding to its automation and AI features. Powered by Adobe Sensei, it’s incredibly powerful AI engine, the new Photoshop Elements 2020 has expanded on its guided edits & social sharing, designed to work perfectly for beginners and professionals alike.
You can get this new release of Photoshop Elements for $99, (or bundle with Premiere Elements for $149), or existing users can upgrade for $80. Honestly, as someone who’s long since forgotten my first copy of Elements for the “pro” versions of Photoshop, I was very surprised with how useful and powerful these new tools are! So lets dive in and have a look at all the new features in Elements 2020.
Key Features For Elements 2020
Photoshop Elements 2020:
- Auto Creations delivered directly to your Home Screen — New photo effects including Black & White Selection, Pattern Brush, Painterly and Depth of Field.
- Automatically colorize your photos — Colorize a B&W photo or give new life to an existing color photo using Adobe Sensei AI technology.
- One-click subject selection — Automatically select the subject of your photo with a single click and easily apply an effect or cut out your subject and add it to another photo.
- Smooth skin automatically — Enhance the people in your photos to look their best with Sensei powered skin smoothing functionality.
- Guided Edits — Learn how to make unwanted photo objects vanish and add creative spark with photo patterns.
Premiere Elements 2020:
- Improve Grainy Videos — Make your videos more crisp with a simple drag and drop of the Reduce Noise effect.
- Auto-tag with Smart Tags — Subjects like sunsets, birthdays, dogs, cats, and faces in your videos are automatically identified during import and stacked so that it’s easy to tag and find them later.
- Guided Edits — Learn how to create dynamic time-lapse videos, animate skies in photos by replacing static skies with moving ones, transform a vertical clip or photo into a horizontal video (or vice versa) in a seamless way that eliminates black bars on the sides or top and bottom of your videos.
Since I am not much of a video editor, I focused mostly on the Photoshop side of things, so with that in mind i’ll talk about that and in a week or so we’ll get you some feedback from our video team on the updates to Premiere Elements 2020.
Photoshop Elements 2020 has a boatload of new features and enhancements at its core. One of the more amazing features to me was the automatic colorization of black & white photos! For those of us who have a lot of old photos of our families and we want to see them “in living color,” a process that used to take hours, can now be done in a matter of seconds with Photoshop Elements 2020. Within this new update you’re also given the ability to select subjects in your photos automatically or manually with a single click, allowing for instant masking and selective edits.
[Related Reading: Adobe Announces Latest Edition Of Their Simple, Yet Powerful Photoshop Elements Software]
For the people wondering about retouching for portraits, Photoshop Elements has added a new skin smoothing function (also heavily reliant on Adobe Sensei), that will automatically rework the skin of your subjects removing blemishes and bumps with ease. Once applied, just use the slider to adjust the amount of smoothing to your preference. There’s also a whole series of “auto creation” options available including pattern brushes, painterly depth of field, black & white selections, and more.
For the people new to photo editing, Elements 2020 brings you a new enhanced features in it’s “Guided Edits” by introducing two new “Guides”, bringing the total to 55 step-by-step photo editing guides to help you quickly learn and grow your skills. One of the new Guided Edits walks you through the steps that help you put the focus on your subject by easily removing distractions from your photos – from power lines to pedestrians or selfie crashers.
Object Removal
Custom Brushes
The second new Guided Edit enables you to add creative sparkle with photo patterns. Learn how to give any photo a little something extra by adding a fun pattern. Brush on hearts, stars, and more to create a photo that looks amazing on printed cards, wall art, or social media.
Create Stunning Prints, Gifts and Creations
U.S. customers can now quickly create and order over 140 creations including prints, wall art, mugs, phone accessories, and more with the new FUJIFILM Prints & Gifts service right inside Photoshop Elements.
Updates to Premiere Elements 2020
Improve Grainy Videos
If you’ve ever shot video in low light, you know the pain of grainy footage. Make your videos more crisp with a simple drag and drop of the Reduce Noise effect.
New Guided Edits
Premiere Elements 2020 is introducing three new Guided Edits, bringing the total to 23 step-by-step video editing guides that help you get started. Create dynamic time-lapse videos — This Guided Edit helps you turn a series of photos or videos into a time-lapse that speeds up the action.
The second Guided Edit enables you to animate skies in your photos by replacing static skies with moving ones that create an eye-catching effect. Finally, learn how to fill the frame to match your video. This Guided Edit teaches you how to transform a vertical clip or photo into a horizontal video (or vice versa) in a seamless way that eliminates black bars on the sides or top and bottom of your videos.
Premiere Elements 2020 features two new Adobe Sensei powered organization features that help you work with and find your video files faster. Just like your photos, your videos are now auto-tagged with Smart Tags based on subjects like sunsets, birthdays, dogs, cats, and more. In addition, faces in your videos are automatically identified during import and stacked by person so that it’s easy to tag and find them later.
Enjoy faster performance and expanded HEIF and HEVC support Last year, the Adobe team worked hard to improve the performance of Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements, and this year you’ll experience even speedier performance for everyday tasks. With the 2020 release, you can also import, and edit HEIF photo files and HEVC video files on Windows as well as macOS.
For more information and to download a trial of these apps, please head over to the Adobe Blog Here
