Do Consumers even need video editing software in this age of instant gratification, when we can grab short clips on our camera phones for posting directly to YouTube? Well, yes, there still is a place for shooting important events like concerts and sports and birthdays, and then spending some time creating fun movies to share with others.

Then do we need a new video editing tool? After all, the software has caught up with the latest innovations over the past few years, with support for HD Camcorders (AVCHD,HDV), burning to Blu-ray Disc, and sharing online and to portable devices. What else do you need?


The biggest change in Elements 8 is the promotion of the Elements Organizer into a full-fledged separate application that handles both photos and video. You can import media, make simple photo adjustments and creations, and then share your material directly from the organizer. Then switch to the full Premiere Elements or Photoshop Elements as needed for further editing.

The key focus of the Organizer is in helping organize your media to help find the items that you want ot work with. You can collect related items into albums(and smart albums with clips that match defined properties), mark clip attributes with keyword tgs(people, places, envents), and rememeber the good clips with star ratings.

Even better, Elements now will do a lot of the legwork for you with Auto-Analyze. It processes your video clips and automatically applies smart tags to indicate characteristics and quality, including video focus, shake, contrast, motion, objects and faces, and audio volume, music, and dialog. Similarly, People Recognition for photos not only finds faces in images, but prompts to learn their names, and then auto-recognizes people in new images. The analysis can be confused, for example, with some faces or moving objects, but in general its's very helpful, and a lot faster than doing all the work yourself.