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As you’ve no doubt heard by now, Adobe earlier today announced Photoshop Elements 8. Normally, when you see the word Photoshop followed by something, it means a dumbed down version. Obviously, Photoshop Elements is not aimed at the professional Photoshop crowd, but I had the opportunity to see a press conference on Photoshop Elements 8 on Monday, and trust me…there’s nothing dumb about it.

Photoshop Elements 8 wants to position itself not only as your software for adding effects to your photos, but also for managing them. You can customize your workspace for easier access to your photos and videos, and tag them for a variety of search options. And like iPhoto, switching from a thumbnail to the full photo is now as simple as a click of the mouse.

The new enhancement features, however, are what will garner all of the attention. Common touch-ups such as creating bluer skies and whitening teeth have been taken care of with one-step shortcuts. Users can now also take two pictures of the same object—with the flash on and the flash off—and have Photoshop Elements 8 automatically combine the two to provide both hightlight and shadow detail. This is a trick professional photographers and users of Photoshop have been doing for a while now, and that power is now part of Elements 8.

Even more impressive is the new Photomerge feature, which takes a look at multiple shots of the same object, and removes unwanted elements. For example, having a hard time getting a photo of a building without passersby getting in the way? Simply take multiple shots on a tripod, open them all up in Photoshop Elements, and draw a line through the items you don’t want. Photoshop will then take that “clean” area from another shot, and overwrite the unwanted element. No more time-consuming rubber stamping, a simple brush stroke will do it (provided you have the multiple shots).

Adobe also showed off the ability to recompose images to any size by removing space between your subjects. Their demo was of a group of kids swimming, but the kids were too far apart. Recomposing the image in Elements 8, you can simply drag the edge of the image closer to the other, and the software will blend the elements that can be tossed out, while retaining the parts you want to keep. Of course, this always looks easy in the demo, and the presenters were quick to point that out, but they have included the ability for you to tell Elements 8 which portions of the image should be retained and which can be sacrificed, so that important pieces don’t get distorted or chopped up.

When you’re done, your images can be shared in web galleries with animated templates, or turned into photo books, scrapbook pages, and more.

Photoshop Elements 8 has a projected release date of fall 2009, and will retail for $99.99. Preorders are only $79.99 after mail in rebate. Learn more at Adobe’s website, and check back with us for our full review.

Product [Photoshop Elements 8]