The drop downs cover Edit, Image, Enhance, Layer, Select and Filter in the main. Here you get red-eye removal, a straighten tool, cut out shape stamps and an impressionist brush. There's clone stamp, healing brush, spot removal, eraser, sharpen, dodge and burn, the regulars in other words but then there's the nod to this being photo-orientated and entry level. The tools are all what you might expect with selection tools but no Bezier curves of course, though there is a quick selection tool. Otherwise, everything else will be familiar to Photoshop users with toolset down the left, drop down menus along the top, and floating palettes to the right. It also has a couple of neat tricks like being able to save all the images in the bin as a group so that the Organizer can easily find and process them. The interface then places loaded images in the sea of battleship grey in the middle, while along the bottom a project bin shows what's open and enables easy chopping and changing between images. Strangely, there's also the Organizer on the startup menu, but this doesn't get its own coloured tab, it's a tawdry icon above them all. In fact, when the program starts up there's the choice of whether to start with the launcher or one of these individual components. You're in the orange tab of Edit, you can click on purple Create or the green world of Share. The tabs don't replace the tabbed menu well which has now been filled in, but rather offer instant access to the other components of the package. However, completely at odds with this grey-day in Grimsby look are the garish tabs and the giddily coloured tool icons. Vista users won't be impressed with the lack of transparency effects and there's no little irony when the operating system looks nicer than an application produced by a graphics company. It starts with a Lightroom-esque interface, which, in other words, is a drear grey with a blue line round the outside. It can be set to default to any of the group. The initial loading screen lets you organise, edit, share and create things. After frequent updates to Elements have made it more like older versions of Photoshop itself, Adobe have decided to shift the goalposts and go more all-in-one photo friendly package for beginners.

Adobe photoshop elements 6