As it has for the past several years in late September, Adobe has announced its latest version of Photoshop Elements, PSE 13. The program should be available very soon.
There has been some speculation that PSE 13 would be available only by subscription like the current versions of Photoshop CC and Lightroom. However, PSE 13 continues to be available in the traditional box form from retail stores.
As with most new releases, PSE 13 is an incremental improvement over last year’s PSE 12. Indeed some nice new features were added to both the Organizer and the Photo Editor modules. The look and feel of the program remains the same.
From a long term perspective, probably the most significant change to the program is that the Windows version has been converted to a 64-bit program. The Mac version of PSE has been a 64-bit program for a while now.
One of the new features that Adobe is most excited about is something they call eLive. This button appears at the very top center of both the Organizer and the Editor modules. Clicking on it, will bring up several PSE tutorials/articles from the internet. These links are dynamic and will be automatically updated periodically by Adobe.
There are several new features as usual. There are a couple of things that I wish were in this latest version, however. The PSE Slide Show Editor goes back to the Photoshop Album days well over ten years ago. Basically, it never changed. Using it you could make slide shows that made it easy to add pan and zoom effects. Additionally, you could add customizable text to your slide images. You could change the text’s style, size, color, and its position on the image or blank slide.
But it was built on legacy code, which was next to impossible to modify. Adobe decided to build a new Slide Show Editor from the ground up. That was no simple task. As a result the initial implementation of the rebuilt Slide Show Editor is very limited in its features and is theme based with only a few themes available. I suspect we will see its features expanded in future releases. However, for this reason, I will keep my PSE 12 around for a while.
The link below highlights some of the more notable improvements and features in PSE 13.
New PSE 13 Features

PSE 13 Organizer Adaptive View
For the past few years, I have maintained a table that compares the current version with previous ones. The link below shows my latest version, with the table beginning at PSE 10. Remember, PSE 11 was the version that ushered in the brand new look and feel to the program, which is maintained in PSE 13.
PSE 13 Feature Comparison
I have worked with PSE 13 for the past several months as part of the Adobe user beta test team. The new program features certainly provide something for everyone. Whether or not you decide to update your current PSE 12 to PSE 13 is a personal choice. If you use PSE 11, you may want to give upgrading serious consideration. If you are still actively using PSE 10 or an earlier version, I think it is time for you to upgrade. You are missing out on the significant improvements made to this program over the past few years.
You can find more information about PSE 13 by clicking on the link below.
Photoshop Elements 13
In future posts I will have more to say about PSE 13 and its video editing sister, Premiere Elements 13 (PRE 13). Stay tuned.
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