Adobe Announcements

The October 2017 update for Adobe Photoshop CC includes the following:

Better brush organization
Organize and save your brushes in the order you want. Drag and drop to reorder, create folders and sub-folders, scale the brush stroke preview, toggle new view modes, and save brush presets with opacity, flow, blend mode, and color.

Brush performance improvements
Don't be slowed down by lagging brushes. New, faster reaction time is especially noticeable when working on large documents with large brushes.

Access Lightroom Photos
Get your photos from Lightroom Cloud Services right inside Photoshop via Search or the Start Screen. With deeper integration between all the Creative Cloud photography desktop and mobile apps, all your photos are synced and accessible everywhere.

Brush stroke smoothing
Get a more polished look faster with a new smoothing algorithm. Vary the amount of smoothing for cleaner lines, even when using a mouse. Available in the Tool Options bar, along with Flow and Opacity.

Exclusive brushes from Kyle T. Webster
Access over 1,000 digital brushes from award-winning illustrator Kyle T. Webster, now available exclusively inside Photoshop.

Variable fonts
With new font technology from Adobe, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, you can define variations within each supported font for weight, height, slant, and more.

Quick Share menu
Share a flattened copy of your work via email, text, social networks, and more. This feature uses native OS sharing mechanisms, including already authenticated services.

Curvature Pen tool
Create paths more quickly, intuitively, and precisely. Push and pull segments directly instead of having to modify Bezier handles, similar to the Curvature tool in Illustrator. Simply double-click to switch between point types.

Path improvements
Improve the look and feel of your paths. Choose the color and line thickness to make them easier to see.

Copy and paste layers
Copy and paste multiple layers in groups, keeping the same order and location instead of having to drag them to reorder. Copy layers onto your clipboard and paste them at the desired specific spot in your panel, within and between documents in Photoshop.

Enhanced tooltips
Learn about the different tools in Photoshop without leaving the app. With enhanced tooltips, dynamic information surfaces when you hover over a tool.

360 panorama workflow
Edit and export 360 panoramas. Photoshop will maintain important metadata to work with third-party viewers. You can also pan and zoom around your image inside a spherical workspace for a realistic preview experience.

Properties panel improvements
Keep better track of details for Adobe Stock assets by viewing title and license state. View an image and find similar images on the Adobe Stock site. Edit type properties with multiple layers selected, change the leading, and more.

Support for Microsoft Dial
Native support for Microsoft Dial gives you quick access to important controls without having to use your mouse. Control brush parameters including size, hardness, opacity, flow, and smoothing.

Paste as plain text
Now you can paste text without the styling. No need to spend the time reformatting text after pasting.

Support for HEIF
Photoshop now supports High Efficiency Image File (HEIF) format, promoted by Apple in macOS 10.13 and iOS 11.0. With depth information provided by the iPhone 7 Plus and future devices, you can create a depth-of-field effect using the Lens Blur filter.

Select and Mask improvements
Get more accurate and realistic results with algorithm and performance improvements, especially in cases where the foreground and background color are similar. Other usability and performance improvements include faster Quick Mask and more intuitive view mode settings.

And so much more
Also includes: Performance and stability improvements, ability to save large files faster, better face detection for Face-Aware Liquify, better Content-Aware Crop and Content-Aware Fill on edges, and more.

B&H carries Adobe Photography Plan subscriptions.

From Adobe:

Being creative with your photos has never been easier.

October 4, 2017 – The Elements team is excited to announce the release of Photoshop Elements 2018 & Premiere Elements 2018.

Before we get into what’s new for this release, we’d like to reassure you that you didn’t miss versions 16 and 17! Moving forward both apps will take on the upcoming year of their release in-lieu of a version number; hence, the transition from version 15 to Photoshop Elements 2018 and Premiere Elements 2018.

With that, let’s get to the good stuff.

Over the years, the Elements products have emphasized easy photo and video organization, editing, creation, and sharing by combining content intelligence with a user-friendly interface and modes for every level of user.

This release focuses on enhancing the experience even further for memory keepers with hassle free organization, automated editing and some fun new Guided Edits that walk you through how to edit and create. As you’ll see, there are a number of exciting new features and enhancements so being creative with your photos and videos has never been easier.

Here’s what’s new and enhanced:

Adobe Elements Organizer 2018

• Auto-Curate – You no longer need to painfully look through a large batch of your photos to select the best ones. The Elements Organizer now automatically curates your photos based on quality, faces, subjects and more.
• Totally reimagined slideshows – Slideshows are a popular and fun way to showcase and share your memories, and now you can turn your curated photos and video clips into stylish and dynamic slideshows with just one click. And of course you can add your own personal touch by choosing a different theme and music, or adding captions.
• New Guided Edits – Guided Edits transform seemingly complex tasks into easy to follow step-by-step instructions that guide you to fantastic results. Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements now offer 67 Guided Edits, including eight brand new ones in this release.
• Swap Backgrounds – Replace backgrounds in seconds by selecting the subject of a photo and placing it on a background that’s more interesting.
• Create Double Exposures – Double exposures continue to grow in popularity, but are difficult and time consuming. No more with this new Guided Edit that brings one photo to life within another to create the surreal effect.
• Add Artistic Overlay Effects – Embellish any photo with a shape overlay and one-click effects that make it a work of art. This Guided Edit is great for scrapbook pages and photo crafts.
• Make Amazing Watercolors – With this Guided Edit, turn any photo into a beautiful, textured watercolor—and even finish it off with text.
• Create fun bounce-back effects – Get step-by-step help making a segment of your video run forward and backward repetitively. Export your bounce-back effect as an animated GIF or short video clip that you can quickly share across social channels with your friends and family.
• Freeze frames with motion titles – Another new Guided Edit that helps you create a freeze frame of your video and add an eye-catching motion title for pro-looking results.
• Fix Action Cam Footage – Eliminate the wide angle fisheye effect of action cams with guidance on how to expertly trim, correct color, and fix lens distortions so it looks its best.
• Create animated social posts – Create a short visual story to share on social media by embellishing a video clip with either static or animated text.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2018

• Automatic Selection – Making a perfect selection is always tough, so we’ve simplified the process. With the new Auto Selection, making precise photo selections has never been easier – simply click, drag and it’s done.
• Open closed eyes like magic – This happens all the time. You take several group photos and in every one someone has their eyes closed. Well we’ve got a fix for that. Photoshop Elements can now automatically copy the open eyes from one photo and blend them into another to create the perfect shot.

Adobe Premiere Elements 2018

• Candid Moments – Now you can automatically extract great photos from your raw video footage with ease, and never need to worry about missing that critical photo while shooting your videos.
• Smart Trim – Automatically trim the bad scenes and keep the good ones based on the style of your video. Smart Trim finds and brings together the best scenes based on the style of your video, and you can even customize that automation.

These are just some of the new and enhanced features in Photoshop Elements 2018 and Premiere Elements 2018. We hope you’re as excited about this release as we are and look forward to your feedback.

– The Elements Team

B&H has Adobe Photoshop Elements 2018 and Premiere Elements 2018 available for preorder.