Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 now on Mac App Store
updated 01:15 am EDT, Wed July 20, 2011
Online version does not include Organizer app
Adobe has made one of its flagship consumer products, Photoshop Elements 9, available in a slightly-modified version on the Mac App Store, selling for $80 rather than the boxed copy's usual $100 retail price. The Mac App Store version, in addition to being Intel-only and requiring OS X 10.6.6 or later, is available in English only and does not include the Adobe Elements Organizer program included in the $100 version.
The program is pitched by Adobe as a complement to iPhoto, offering more powerful editing tools while allowing users to keep the photos organized inside iPhoto with "round trip" editing. Apart from the lack of an included organizer, the Photoshop Elements program itself is identical to the retail version, including the popular "content-aware fill" feature, the Group Shot compositing feature and various levels of edit modes for different users' comfort levels. The Mac App Store is 1.02GB in size, and supports any Intel-based compatible third-party plug-ins.
The current version of Photoshop Elements is almost a year old, leading to some speculation that it may be replaced in the near future. How Adobe plans to handle upgrading Photoshop Elements when the time comes has not yet been addressed by the company, but could be done either as a separate offering (a la new versions of iLife) or as an in-app purchase.
