Photoshop Elements 12 review: Mobile albums and content-aware tools dominate new release

Adobe’s annual update to Photoshop Elements, its consumer image organizer and editor, offers a satisfying array of new features. While changes in version 12’s Organizer focus on syncing and sharing photos for access on mobile devices, the Elements 12 Editor includes slick Instagram-inspired effects, textures, frames, new guided edits, and a content-aware move tool. Even more exciting is an intuitive image-correction method that remembers how you use it and a red-eye tool that works on animals—two features that even its flagship sibling Photoshop CC doesn’t have.

Elements 12 OrganizerOne huge challenge in mobile photography is getting images off of your device. In version 12, the Elements Organizer lets you create mobile albums with Adobe Revel—a free online storage, syncing, and sharing utility, similar to Apple’s iCloud and Photo Stream. The free Revel iOS app also includes handy editing abilities. A Revel account gives you unlimited photo imports for one month, and 50 photos per month thereafter (a $6 monthly fee gives you unlimited imports). You can import photos into Revel and create mobile albums on your iOS device or in the desktop Elements 12 Organizer; you can them share automatically sync between them and share them via email.

The album is viewable in a Web browser (on a pleasing, but uncustomizable grid on a black background) in the invitee’s own Revel account or Elements 12 Organizer—a great way to share vacation photos. You can share single images via social media, with Twitter a welcome new addition.

Rounding out the upgrades to the Organizer is the ability to see Places and Event tags in the Tags/Info panel. You just drag and drop a tag onto an image to apply it; and in Places view, you can click a location on the map and choose Show Media to see just those photos.

Once you share a mobile album, others can add, edit, and even download photos (if you granted permission to do so when you shared the album), though only the person who uploaded a photo can delete it. Elements 12 EditorIn the Adobe Elements Editor’s Quick mode, you’ll spot three new buttons at the bottom right of the window: Effects, Textures, and Frames. Applying these Instagram-style treatments is a single-click affair, though clicking the single Reset Image button at the top of these panels removes all the effects, textures, or frames that you’ve applied. To undo specific effects, you have to click into each panel separately and then click Undo from the Action Bar. It’s a little awkward.

In Quick mode, you can create Instagram-style treatments using the new Effects, Textures, and Frames buttons (the Light Leak effect and Aged frame are shown here). Click and drag a photo to reposition it within the frame. Switch to Guided mode and you’ll find three new step-by-step techniques: Zoom Burst Effect (for simulating motion), Puzzle Effect (for creating a puzzle out of your photo), and Restore Old Photo. That last one walks you through a complicated series of tasks including cropping, using the Spot Healing Brush, the Healing Brush, Clone Stamp tools, Dust Removal (which triggers the Dust & Scratches filter), Auto Levels, Auto Contrast, Auto Color Correction, conversion to black-and-white, and sharpening. Whew!

The new Puzzle Effect guided edit lets you choose the puzzle-piece size, as well as select and extract individual pieces. When you’re finished extracting pieces, you can switch to Expert mode, activate the layer of an extracted piece, and use the Free Transform tool to rotate it. Take a peek in the Enhance menu, and you’ll find a new Auto Smart Tone feature for automatic lighting and contrast corrections. Using a unique, on-image interface, you can fine-tune the autocorrections by clicking and dragging a joystick controller in the direction of a corrected image thumbnail (they’re positioned at each corner of the dialog box). By dragging the joystick toward a thumbnail, you apply more of that particular correction.

If the object you want to move has free space around it, and you don’t move it very far, the Content-Aware Move tool works well. That said, you may need to do some cleanup with the Clone Stamp tool. Last but not least, photographers will appreciate the File menu’s new ‘Open in Camera Raw’ command for opening supported file formats in the Camera Raw plug-in; and, happily, you can now delete layers by pressing the Delete key on your keyboard.

The new Auto Smart Tone feature is intuitive: It remembers how you fine-tune corrections in order to apply them the next time you use the feature. The interface also includes a handy Before/After switch at the bottom left. Bottom lineFamily memoirists will love the Restore Old Photos guided edit, while the Auto Smart Tone feature saves time for the snap-happy. Fixing a pet’s eyes and repositioning items in a photo is highly useful, and the former is unique to this program. iPhonography fans will dig the mobile albums, and scrapbookers will adore Effects, Frames, and Textures. If you use Elements regularly, this upgrade is worth the money; if you’ve outgrown iPhoto, then Photoshop Elements 12 is the next logical step.

Lesa Snider, founder of PhotoLesa.com, is on a mission to teach the world to create better graphics. She's the author of Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual, coauthor of iPhoto '11: The Missing Manual (Pogue Press/O'Reilly), a creativeLIVE instructor, stock photographer, and a columnist for Photoshop User magazine.
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US to release annual figures on spying orders and people affected

The U.S. government has decided to release data annually on its secret spy orders and the number of people affected by them, the country's intelligence chief said Thursday.

The government will release the total number of orders issued during the prior 12-month period, and the number of targets affected by the orders, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said in a statement on "IC on the record," the DNI's page on Tumblr.

The disclosures will be broken down under certain categories such as data requests under the business records provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and National Security Letters issued by the government, he added.

The move follows demands by lawmakers, rights groups and Internet companies that the government should release more information on the secret collection of data from telephone and Internet companies by the National Security Agency.

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed through newspapers certain documents that suggested that the government had real-time access to content on servers of some Internet companies, under a surveillance program called Prism. The companies have denied their participation in the NSA program. The Guardian newspaper in the U.K. also published in June a copy of an order to Verizon by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington, D.C., which required Verizon to provide call records or "telephony metadata" of its customers to the NSA on an ongoing daily basis.

Most of these data requests have been in the form of "gag orders," which prohibit the recipients of data request orders from discussing them in public. Microsoft and Google have asked FISC to allow them to disclose aggregate numbers on FISA and related data requests by the government, but the U.S. Department of Justice has postponed replying to the pleas six times so far.

Internet companies like Facebook, Yahoo, Apple and Microsoft have so far released aggregate figures for data requests from the government, but didn't say how many were related to national security. The companies said they could not break out requests under FISA, because those figures were classified.(

"Our ability to discuss these activities is limited by our need to protect intelligence sources and methods," Clapper said in the statement.

He described FISA and national security letters as an "important part of our effort to keep the nation and its citizens safe." Disclosing more detailed information about how they are used and to whom they are directed can help enemies avoid detection, he added.

Following criticism of the NSA surveillance program, President Barack Obama said earlier this month that his administration will appoint an independent board to review the country's surveillance programs, and also add a privacy advocate to defend privacy in the FISA court when agencies ask the court for new surveillance orders. Obama also said he will work with the U.S. Congress to limit data collection by the NSA under the Patriot Act.

John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service. Follow John on Twitter at @Johnribeiro. John's e-mail address is john_ribeiro@idg.com

John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service.
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Upcoming Salesforce.com CRM release focuses on Chatter, customer service

Salesforce.com's next CRM (customer relationship management) software release will contain a slew of new features, with many focused on the Chatter collaboration and messaging tool as well as customer service, according to a set of official release notes.

Many new features associated with Chatter concern usability and access to the system. For example, now iOS device users will be able to launch Chatter Mobile from their Salesforce.com email.

[ Also on InfoWorld: Salesforce.com adds premium 'Performance Edition' bundle. | For a quick, smart take on the news you'll be talking about, check out InfoWorld Tech Brief -- subscribe today. ]

This is an important update "as most folks are still email-dependent," said analyst Ray Wang , CEO of Constellation Research.

Another major new feature, albeit available only as a pilot, is called Salesforce Files. It allows users to "securely sync files between Chatter and your desktop and some mobile devices," according to the notes. "This is the competitor to Box," and something customers should look at, Wang said.

For core sales automation, the upcoming release introduces Console for Sales.

This gives users "easy access to sales intelligence and helps you quickly contact leads, assess companies, and identify key contacts -- all in a dashboard-like interface that means more access to contextual data with fewer clicks and less scrolling," according to the notes.

Salesforce.com has also deepened the integration between its application and Microsoft Outlook.

Known as Winter '14, the new release also features improvements to Salesforce.com Communities, including the ability to assign a moderator to groups; and a series of usability updates within the Service Cloud product family, which includes Chatter Answers, Salesforce.com's knowledge base platform and Live Agent, among others.

Meanwhile, Winter '14's new feature lineup for analytics and mobile is less impressive, in Wang's view.

"Next to the mobile apps, analytics still is the weakest part of Salesforce.com," Wang said. "To be clear, it's better reporting and dashboards, not really analytics, as there are no predictive models, or algorithms applied here. This area will require the most attention in the long run but for now, reporting and KPIs are fairly decent."

Many of the new features in Winter '14 came from users' suggestions submitted through Salesforce.com's IdeaExchange, which is admirable on the company's part, Wang said.

As of November, Salesforce.com will no longer offer new customers the ability to purchase Unlimited Edition subscriptions, although it will support existing ones, according to the notes. Instead, the top-tier offering will be the recently announced Performance Edition, which costs more money but includes additional features.

It wasn't immediately clear Monday when the Winter '14 update will go live, although customers with Salesforce.com sandbox accounts can take part in a preview period that begins Sept. 6.

Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris' email address is Chris_Kanaracus@idg.com

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Upcoming Salesforce.com release focuses on Chatter, service

Salesforce.com’s next CRM (customer relationship management) software release will contain a slew of new features, with many focused on the Chatter collaboration and messaging tool as well as customer service, according to a set of official release notes.

Many new features associated with Chatter concern usability and access to the system. For example, now iOS device users will be able to launch Chatter Mobile from their Salesforce.com email.

This is an important update “as most folks are still email-dependent,” said analyst Ray Wang , CEO of Constellation Research.

Another major new feature, albeit available only as a pilot, is called Salesforce Files. It allows users to “securely sync files between Chatter and your desktop and some mobile devices,” according to the notes. “This is the competitor to Box,” and something customers should look at, Wang said.

For core sales automation, the upcoming release introduces Console for Sales.

This gives users “easy access to sales intelligence and helps you quickly contact leads, assess companies, and identify key contacts—all in a dashboard-like interface that means more access to contextual data with fewer clicks and less scrolling,” according to the notes.

Salesforce.com has also deepened the integration between its application and Microsoft Outlook.

Known as Winter ’14, the new release also features improvements to Salesforce.com Communities, including the ability to assign a moderator to groups; and a series of usability updates within the Service Cloud product family, which includes Chatter Answers, Salesforce.com’s knowledge base platform and Live Agent, among others.

Meanwhile, Winter ’14’s new feature lineup for analytics and mobile is less impressive, in Wang’s view.

“Next to the mobile apps, analytics still is the weakest part of Salesforce.com,” Wang said. “To be clear, it’s better reporting and dashboards, not really analytics, as there are no predictive models, or algorithms applied here. This area will require the most attention in the long run but for now, reporting and KPIs are fairly decent.”

Many of the new features in Winter ’14 came from users’ suggestions submitted through Salesforce.com’s IdeaExchange, which is admirable on the company’s part, Wang said.

As of November, Salesforce.com will no longer offer new customers the ability to purchase Unlimited Edition subscriptions, although it will support existing ones, according to the notes. Instead, the top-tier offering will be the recently announced Performance Edition, which costs more money but includes additional features.

It wasn’t immediately clear Monday when the Winter ’14 update will go live, although customers with Salesforce.com sandbox accounts can take part in a preview period that begins Sept. 6.

Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for the IDG News Service.
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Nginx Web server goes commercial with new release

Nginx is releasing a commercial edition of its namesake open source Web server software, called Nginx Plus, which it will market as a software alternative to application delivery controllers (ADCs).

"The features that have been added are very similar to what you'd find in hardware-based ADCs," said Gus Robertson, CEO of Nginx. "We're an alternative to Apache, but I think we're also an alternative to hardware-based application delivery controllers."

Robertson said that the software will provide functionality similar to that of ADC appliances from F5 Networks or Citrix, which are used to speed delivery of high traffic websites through techniques of load balancing and caching.

Nginx has already made a name for itself as a Web server able to very efficiently handle large amounts of traffic.

Russian system administrator Igor Sysoev released the first version of Nginx in 2004 under a BSD open source license, after becoming frustrated by what he felt were the limitations of the market-leading Apache Web server software.

Sysoev specifically designed Nginx (pronounced "Engine X") for handling large volumes of traffic, up to 10,000 concurrent connections per server. It includes advanced traffic management features often found in ADCs, such as load balancing, edge caching and reverse proxy services.

According to the company, Nginx is now the most widely used Web server software among the world's 1,000 busiest sites. Web heavyweights such as Netflix, Hulu, Pinterest, AirBnB, WordPress.com, GitHub, SoundCloud, Zynga, Eventbrite and Zappos have all used Nginx to serve their sites.

The software now runs about 100 million websites overall, or about 14.55 percent of the Web, according to the latest Internet survey from Netcraft.

Sysoev founded Nginx the company in 2011, and took the role of chief technology officer. Nginx attracted US$3 million in first-round venture capital funding. Currently, it employs about 15 people. Robertson took over as CEO in April; formerly, he was the vice president of global business development for Red Hat, another open source software company.

Heretofore, Nginx, the company, has chiefly offered subscription support services for the open source software, around configuration and performance tuning, performance optimization and technical account management. Nginx Plus is the company's first commercial product.

Under a dual license, the commercial version of Nginx will offer additional features over the freely available open source version.

"The advanced functionality enhances the capabilities of Nginx in regards to load balancing, request routing, health monitoring and general control and monitoring of Nginx instances in mission critical environments," said Andrew Alexeev, Nginx co-founder and head of business development.

One of the most significant new features is the ability to make configuration changes to a running copy of Nginx, without the need to restart the software for the changes to take affect. Typically configuration changes to Web server software, such as Nginx or Apache, require the software to be stopped and then restarted, which can momentarily disrupt operations.

"Even graceful restarts can affect the operation, and adds slight overhead. [Users] want to change aspects of Nginx on the fly," Alexeev said.

With monitoring, the commercial package provides metrics of a running copy of Nginx, in the JSON (JavaScript Simple Object Notation) format. "You can import these metrics into any standard commercial or open source monitoring system, or you could use your own template through HTML or JavaScript," Alexeev said. The software package also comes with its own metrics dashboard as well.

The health check can alert an administrator when a back-end component of a Web application has failed, such as the database. It does this by comparing the size of a new Web page with the size it should be. It can also automatically take out of service those servers relying on the failing components. Nginx has also collaborated with New Relic to integrate the data generated by health checks to show up in New Relic's application performance management (APM) software.

Other features of the commercial edition include additional load balancing capabilities, and advanced media streaming for Adobe HDS and Apple HLS video formats.

Although Nginx Plus should run on any standard Linux distribution, Nginx has certified that the software runs on Amazon Linux, Red Hat, CentOS, Ubuntu, and Debian distributions.

Nginx Plus will cost $1,350 per instance per year and is available now.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com

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