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Adobe expands push for video, photo hobbyists

The company releases new applications aimed at amateur photographers and video shooters.

David Becker Staff Writer, CNET News.com
David Becker
covers games and gadgets.
David Becker
2 min read
Adobe Systems expanded its pitch to hobbyists Wednesday with a new video-editing package aimed at amateurs and a stripped-down version of its Photoshop image-editing application.

Premiere Elements fleshes out Adobe's push to grab a chunk of the video-editing market, which has become increasingly lucrative as digital camcorders have proliferated.

The package is based on Premiere Pro, Adobe's kit for professional video editing, and includes basic tools for capturing video from a camcorder, adding effects and transitions, and saving the finished video on a DVD.

The package will go on sale for $100 later this fall and be available only for Windows. Adobe has largely ignored Apple Computer's Mac OS X operating system in its video push, due to the dominance of Final Cut and other video applications made by Apple.

Also Wednesday, Adobe announced version 3.0 of Photoshop Elements, the hobbyist image editing application based on the company's market-leading Photoshop package for graphics professionals.

Elements includes photo-organizing tools similar to the company's Photoshop Album. It also offers image-editing tools previously available only in the full version of Photoshop, such as the "healing brush" tool for automatically touching up image flaws.

Photoshop Elements for Windows XP will sell for $100. The company will also sell a $90 Mac version intended to serve as a companion to iPhoto, the image-organizing and slideshow application included with OS X.

"The combination of iPhoto, Photoshop Elements and our...new iMac G5 delivers the ultimate home digital photo studio," Ron Okamoto, vice president of worldwide developer relations at Apple, said in a statement.

Mac users have long been a key constituent of Adobe's core market of "creative professionals." Adobe and Apple have partnered on many products, but their relationship has become increasingly complicated in recent years, because the two companies have become competitors in some markets.