If you're relatively new to photography, you will want to take a look at Adobe's just released Photoshop Elements 2020. Explicitly designed for beginners, it's also the most powerful entry-level version of Photoshop.

 Priced affordably at $99, you can buy it bundled with the also new Adobe Premier Elements for $149. You can download a 30-day free trial version.

Photoshop Elements 2020 offers this and more

• It has a wide range of capabilities at a reasonable price.

• There are three access levels for beginners, intermediate, and expert users.

• There's excellent automation powered by Adobe Sensei, Adobe's powerful AI engine.

• You can easily make selections with its new One-Click Subject Selection.

• It's improved how you can remove unwanted objects from an image.

• It features a new way to colorize images.

• A redesigned home screen that, when first opened, lets you know what's new with the software.

• The home screen will ask you what you want to do. Once you answer, it offers you numerous options. Read on:

When you open the software, the home screen will ask you what you want to do and answers you by presenting a host of options and examples. (More on this later.) Click away on the options, and you'll get to the many new features powered by artificial intelligence, Adobe Sensei. 

Keep in mind that this latest version focuses a great deal on automation. But, no worries, it hasn't sacrificed anything. If anything, it's made things easier for the user by offering the choice between manual or automation. For example, you can choose to apply specific effects yourself or allow AI to do it for you. Options include the Pattern Brush, Depth of Field, or the new Painterly! 

Technical Stuff, including Performance

Several new features make Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020 very attractive to users, including its three-level interface and its support of HEIF files. Let's start with its interface.

Remember when we said that the home screen would ask you questions about what you want to accomplish? A dialog box presents those questions. Once you answer, it offers options via scrolling menu panels that include links to open Organizer, Photo Editor, or (if you have Premier installed) Video Editor.

If you select Photo Editor, you'll see three operating levels: Quick, Guided, and Expert. Whichever you choose, you can always level-up or down by selecting from the top menu bar.

• Quick: There are four activities in a menu at the bottom right: Adjustments, Effects, Textures, and Frames. Click one and examples of each as a thumbnail come up on the right side. Each thumbnail expands to display additional options.

• Guided: You'll see Basics, Color, Black & White, Fun Edits, Special Effects, and Photomerge. Even though these are relatively intuitive and straightforward, it will still guide you through the necessary steps. Regardless of your skill level, you'll find it relatively easy in Guided to learn and do new things. Even the more experienced photographers will probably learn something.

• Expert: Welcome to what effectively looks like Photoshop! The menu bar is almost identical to Photoshop. However, you'll here you'll find an Enhance tab and some automated tasks such as Auto Haze Removal, Auto Smart Fix, and Auto Sharpen. Pretty nifty! There are also fast-access icons such as Effects, Filters, Styles, Layers, etc.

New Technical Stuff

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020 supports a relatively new technology known as HEIF files (High-Efficiency Image File Format). HEIF claims to store more data than a typical JPEG image of the same size. 

Gift Products

A lot of photographers earn income from the gift products they offer their clients. Even if you don't have clients as a beginner or hobby photographer, you've likely ordered photo products at some point. Elements ensure you can order 140 different products such as wall art, phone cases, t-shirts, etc. straight from the software.

Finally, we say

Beginners: We think that if you're a beginner to photography, you'll find Photoshop Elements 2020 relatively easy to use and worth the $99. It ensures you've got the basics down and then takes you to the next level of photo editing without vast amounts of time invested, making the $99 worth it.

Intermediate: If you're more of an intermediate level user, you'll likely still find it useful as there's plenty to learn with its help.  

Advanced: If you're already an experienced user of Photoshop, we think you might enjoy using Elements for its automation advances. 

Our best advice is to download their free trial and give it a go! Try it out and see whether you agree with us that it's a software worth having.