Adobe's Elements applications (Photoshop and Premiere) have always been targeted at those who want to improve their photos and videos but at a lower cost than the pro versions and without the need to master the more complex applications. The 2019 versions of the applications bring even more power.
Each new versions brings performance improvements, but the keys this year include automatic creation of collages and other improvements that depend on Adobe's Sensei (artificial intelligence) technology and more guided edits that walk users through some of the more complex functions. There are now 53 guided edits across the two main applications.
Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements are available separately or as a bundle. Individually or combined, users also receive the Organizer application that's used to import photos and videos, organize files, manage catalogs and removable drives, specify folders that should be watched for new images, select images for use with one of 6 photo-merge functions, recognize people's faces, and much more. It's easy to just open either of the main applications and ignore the Organizer, but you'll get a lot more out of the applications if you make it your friend.
Photo collages have been popular with users and Adobe has redesigned them in the 2019 edition of Photoshop Elements. The goal is to make it possible to create the initial collage with fewer clicks and then apply templates that are designed to work well with Instagram and other social media. Users can also further personalize collages with frames or by changing the background.
Four of the new features in Photoshop Elements are illustrated with guided edits. Memes are popular on Facebook and other social media and a guided edit shows users the process of adding text, applying filters, and including other effects that make the meme memorable. Another shows users how to fill text with images with a different photo in each letter, if desired. Or, if you want to add a decorative border to a photo and include text, you'll find a guided edit for that. This is a great feature to use when creating titles for sections of photo books, by the way. The fourth of the new guided edits shows how to brush on one of several effects that can make part of the image appear to be drawn in pencil or printed on old paper. There's also an antique photo look.
A photo I took at the Kenny Road Market (a place with just about any type of beer you might ever want, snacks, and trucks to rent) is a bit crooked and needs to be cropped to eliminate the ceiling lights and the coolers on the left. It's a raw image, so I'll have good control over the highlights and shadows.
Opening a raw file in Photoshop Elements is similar to opening a raw file in Photoshop CC in that it triggers a version of Adobe Camera Raw.
The primary difference is that the version of Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop Elements lacks many of the features found in the full version of ACR. Even so, it covers the basic modifications that most people will need. Once you've made the necessary changed in Camera Raw, open the image in Photoshop Elements.
To illustrate the Meme Maker guided edit, I used a photograph of my wife and younger daughter at the Columbus Metropolitan Library's main building.
The process starts with the full image and a default background. As with other guided edits that we've seen in earlier versions, the step-by-step instructions are provided at the right.
I added some text at the top and bottom of the frame, selected a different background, and cropped the image. Then I added an effect that creates a motion blur. At this point, the user could export the image for use in social media or continue editing by clicking the Expert tab.
The Expert tab provides access to the layers and masks that Photoshop Elements applied automatically.
Each of the layers is named and a thumbnail illustrates what's on the layer. While this isn't Photoshop CC, users can make some impressive changes as they gain experience.
Adobe has reworked the Quick Edit mode for videos with the goal of simplifying the interface. A new Smart Trim option uses artificial intelligence to automatically select the best parts of the video and then work the user through the process of trimming the excess.
There's a simplified timeline that makes the process of combining title sequences, video clips, still photos, and music easier.
Two new guided edits were added this year, one that makes a "glass pane" effect that makes the video appear to be behind a pane of glass. The other creates dramatic scene transitions by automatically analyzing each scene's dark and light areas.
We'll take a closer look at Premiere Elements in a future program.
Increasingly powerful photo manipulator will please usersKeeping in mind that the Elements applications are designed for non-professionals, I'm once again surprised by the functions that Adobe has exposed to those who don't have the time or the inclination to master applications such as Lightroom and Photoshop CC. The ability to move from basic photo edits to guided edits for complex tasks and eventually to the fully manual Expert mode make it possible for users to develop new skills over time.
Additional details are available on the Adobe website.
PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO ALL YOUR CONTACTS! Any message that includes those words is probably meaningless and may be a scam. Instead of blindly following the instructions, it would be better to do a little research first.
One of the more recent examples of this kind of nonsense has been circulating on Facebook. The message says that almost every account is being cloned. That is demonstrably false, but it is a problem. To make it worse, people are forwarding the message with claims that they have been "hacked". They haven't. Their accounts are safe, but they have been cloned.
Anyone can create a Facebook account using any name. After all, there's more than one Bill Blinn in the world so there could be multiple accounts with my name. One of those accounts might be a clone. To find out if your account has been cloned, just search for your name on Facebook.
If other accounts with your name exist, look for one that uses your profile picture or account banner. Such an account is clearly a fake and you should report it. I described how to do that in August. You might also want to examine the other accounts, but any account that's not using your images is probably legitimate.
How does Facebook tell the difference between Joe Smith and the hundreds or thousands of other people with the same name? Easy: Each user has a unique ID (or index) number. Your email address and password link to the ID. The display name is just that: the name that Facebook displays for your posts.
If you'd like to find out what your Facebook ID is, go to your account page and right-click the profile picture. Select Copy link address from the context menu and then paste the address into any document that can display text. The account ID is the number at the end of the string, following the id "referrer_profile_id".
Automatically forwarding warning messages is unwise. In the first few years of this century, I received forwards from a friend in Arizona. It's the worst virus ever! some of the messages said. Microsoft had announced it. Or AOL had announced it. When I pointed out that the messages were fakes and that forwarding them exacerbated the problem, his usual response was but what if it's real?
Each time I repeated the obvious problems:
Eventually, after several years, he realized that the messages he had been forwarding were, at best, misinformed -- and possibly malevolent. So he stopped forwarding them. When it comes to Facebook account cloning, the problem is real, but the warnings are sadly misinformed. We'll take a look at what you can do about the problem next ....
In a word, no, but you can make it more difficult. Before going there, though, think for a moment about why somebody would want to clone your account. The most common reason is to use the cloned account to convince people who are already your Facebook friends to accept a friend request from the fake account. But then want? If Joe's account has been cloned and Mary accepts a friend request from the fake Joe, the fake account can post information on Mary's timeline. The posts could be phony political messages, advertisements for scams that plan to steal money or credentials, or social engineering schemes intended to collect enough information to steal a person's identity.
Understanding that you cannot eliminate the risk, understand that you can mitigate risk by tightening your account's privacy settings to hide information from strangers. Start by going to the account page and clicking Friends in the menu.
Then locate the pencil icon, click it, and select Edit Privacy.
The first decision is who can see your friends list. The safest selection is Only Me and that's the best choice unless there's a good reason why others should be able to see your friends' names.
Then locate the question mark icon on the account's main page, click it, and select Privacy Settings.
On the Privacy tab, choose the option to Review a few important privacy settings. This will open a page with several sections.
The first section determines the default setting for your posts. The two primary options are Friends and Public. The public setting provides a larger potential audience for your posts and it's what most businesses will want. Limiting visibility to friends by default is safer.
Individual posts can be set public or private, but be aware that the setting is sticky. If your default setting is private and you change the visibility for one post to public, all subsequent posts will be public until you change the setting again.
The next section is your profile and it determines who can see information from your profile.
You can control settings individually for your phone number, email address, birthday, and home town.
Next, you may want to return to the main account page, choose photos, and then albums.
Each album has a privacy setting.
Although you can't limit the visibility of your profile picture or the account banner, it's wise to limit access to other images.
There are two takeaways that I consider important here:
Until you're certain, don't panic. And even if you are sure, don't panic. Panic can make a serious situation even worse. In other words, maybe we should all try to act somewhat like physicians and first, do no harm.
Google+ is dead because of a security breach that affected only a "few" people. About half a million. By current standards that's small, but Google decided to shut down its Facebook wanna be. It was never really a contender and the security breach appears to be what convinced Google to kill the project.
But ...
The breach was discovered in March. It had been present since 2015 and exposed user names, email addresses, sex, and age. Google says it has no way to identify which users were affected and believes that no data was actually stolen. But if they don't know which accounts were affected, how can they know if anything was stolen?
Even worse, this is October. The breach was discovered in March. By my calendar, that's 7 months. Why the silence? Well, it wasn't accidental. The Wall Street Journal reviewed an internal memo from Google's legal and policy staff to senior executives. The memo warned that disclosure would generate "immediate regulatory interest" and would probably expose Google to comparisons with Facebook's leak of user information to Cambridge Analytica.
Rules vary from one country to another, but nearly every national government agency specifies that a breach must be reported within hours or (at most) a few weeks of being discovered. Google intentionally failed to report the breach and it should suffer the consequences.
