Adobe's Photoshop^R Elements has been very popular among hobby photographers and crafters for some time. With this new upgrade to version 7, we have some new features and improvements to old favorites. The new feature that is impossible to miss is the one-click connection to Photoshop.com, which is a new online resource site that extends Elements' features and increases your inspiration and creativity. But, we will talk about that in another article. For now, let's take a tour of the new Organizer in Photoshop Elements 7. You can buy Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 alone or combined with Premiere^R Elements 7.

First, you are welcomed with a screen where you can login to your Photoshop.com account or open Elements by choosing one of four task buttons, Organize, Edit, Create or Share. Each task has its own workspace. I really like the Organizer feature and the way it manages your photo, video, audio and PDF files.

The first thing that you are asked to do when you open Elements for the first time is to choose the folder or folders that you wish Elements to organize. By not scanning your entire hard drive and collecting information on a lot of images that you may not need, you are saving the software and yourself a lot of time and energy. Once you have indicated your choice of folders, Elements takes a few seconds to scan the folders and store the information. I was surprised how fast this was. It only took a few seconds to scan my inventory folders. As a graphic artist, my store inventory is my digital art, which surprisingly came to over 3500 images just on my hard drive.

But this Organizer feature is more than just a stored list of the images in your folders. That's where the intuitive Timeline, Date View, Keyword Tags, Project Bins, Photo Stacks and Smart Albums come into play. Digital artists and photographers alike can use these many tools to find just the right image or images needed for the current job. You can have one image that can be cataloged in many ways such as color scheme, pattern or theme. By using these search tools, you can find that one image, and all the others, that are good for a specific job. You will especially like the Photo Stacks and Smart Albums for keeping track of revisions and grouping images together by project.

Elements gives you a great amount of control over how you find and view your images from customizing the way Elements' Photo Downloader downloads your photos and metadata from your camera to how you tag and search for your images. You can search by star ratings, people, places, events, shapes, compositions or photos with faces. You can view those images by thumbnails, Date View, full screen or Photo Compare's side by side view. Also, the workspace is easy to use. I really liked the Keyword Tags and Albums palettes with their friendly icons and drag and drop ease.

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