Photoshop Elements 2019 Has Arrived

I wanted to let you know that Adobe, as it has done for so many years, has just announced Photoshop Elements 2019, the latest version of the venerable photo editor and organization tool. As is so often the case, there's not a ton of new stuff: some new automation features, new guided edits, and some performance improvements and bug fixes.

...

Because we're all friends here, I'll cut to the chase: I'm a bit underwhelmed with the update, as I have been for the past few versions. If you're a photographer who uses Elements primarily as an image editor, there is not a lot in there for you: the new Camera Raw profiles and support for new cameras and the HEIC image format used in the latest iPhones (HEIC support is Mac only, however). The new Guided Edits are interesting, but not awesome, although the meme editor is kind of fun, if you're into that sort of thing. And the Auto Creations stuff, well, they're also interesting, but in my testing, I still needed a lot of work to get them right—and you need to use the Organizer to generate them, which won't work for a lot of people.

If you've been holding off upgrading from a much older version of Elements, there have been enough new additions to Elements over the past few versions to make the 2019 version worthwhile. But, unless you are someone who has to have the latest version, I don't see a lot of reasons to update from Elements 2018, beyond the standard bug fixes (of which there are a few) and performance improvements (which are real, but not huge).

I also allude to this at the end of my post: the reasons for choosing Elements are becoming much more cloudy than in the past. Many people who have opted for Elements in the past wanted Photoshop-like features (lots of tools, layers, filters, plug-in support) at a lower cost than Photoshop, but Elements isn't that much cheaper than Adobe's $10/month photography plan at this point, and you get a lot more for your buck with that.

If you're opposed to subscriptions—which I totally get—the landscape (pun alert!) is changing rapidly for photographers, and Photoshop Elements could very well lose more of its luster in the coming months, especially when you look at the competition:
• ON1 (full disclosure: I write their manual) just announced a new version of $99 Photo RAW, shipping in November, that will have full non-destructive layer support, a text tool and more, making it a true Photoshop/Lightroom competitor with some unique features— and a much better organizational tool (in Browse) than what you get with the Organizer. (The text tool will also make it possible to do true scrapbook-style layouts, if you're into that, and don't need the automation found in Elements.)
• Alien Skin's Exposure X4, which sells for $149 (upgrades $99), also has layers, cool film-based effects, and a photo-management tool. Like ON1, they've been around forever, and are a small company doing good work.
• Luminar, from Skylum, offers a layered workflow today for $69, and has promised an organizational tool that will be available by the end of the year. Skylum has been very aggressive over the past few years, and, while I think their software has been a bit on the slow side, they're improving that with every new version. (They also have an interesting HDR app, called Aurora, that was just updated.)
And those are just a few of the new tools out there. So, if you are in the market for new imaging tools, you'll have some interesting choices over the next few months, and you will be able to try them all out without spending a dime: every app mentioned in this newsletter (Elements included) has a 30-day trial version.