Software giant Adobe on Tuesday announced the launch of Photoshop Elements 9, the company’s consumer-level photo editing application, for both Mac and Windows. The new version boasts a number of features that are new to Mac users, most notably the bundled Elements Organizer, which acts as a hub for importing, managing, and viewing photo and video files.
Per Macworld, Photoshop Elements 9 includes one of Photoshop CS5’s most popular features, Content Aware Fill, and puts it into the Spot Healing Brush. This tool can be used to remove specific objects from an image by analyzing the surrounding information. Also new to this version are Layer Masks, which can be used to block out specific parts of images with varying transparency levels.
Users new to photo editing can use the program’s guided edits to learn how to make edits to their images via tutorial-based instructions. Edited images can then be posted directly to sites like Facebook and Flickr from the organizer, or by using any of the templates included in Elements 9 to create scrapbooks, photobooks, online albums, or slideshows.
The Elements Organizer lets users sort images in a number of ways, including with automatic face recognition and keyword tags. A new auto-analyzing tag feature analyzes the content of images, such as lighting and contrast, to smartly suggest appropriate keyword tags.
Photoshop Elements 9 runs on Intel-based Macs and requires Mac OS X 10.5.8 or later to install and run. The program will cost US$100 and come packaged with the Elements Organizer. For an additional US$50, users can upgrade to Photoshop Elements 9 Plus, which adds 20GB of online storage and access to various libraries of templates, guides, and artwork.