The inclusion of layer masks is helpful for those who do detailed photo editing. There were a number of available workarounds for the lack of layer masks in Elements, many of them quite effective but requiring extra steps. This can be useful for things like boosting color saturation or contrast on just part of a photo. Layer masks allow you to selectively show only a portion of a layer on the final edited picture. Layer masks have also finally moved from full-fledged Photoshop to Elements. But even when results aren't ideal, I'm finding it easier to start off with this new tool and then clean up imperfect areas with a manual tool, than it would be to do the entire clean-up with a more labor-intensive tool such as clone stamp.

This works better if areas aren't too large and be advised that results aren't always perfect (a fairly complex situation such as a rope winding around leaves and flowers can generate some obviously incorrect analysis). 'Content-aware' means the software analyzes the surrounding areas and creates what it thinks should appear instead. With this more robust technology, you get reasonably good results by using the brush to paint over larger areas you want removed. With previous iterations of the spot-healing brush, you could click on a small area and have a spot or blemish automatically vanish. Content-aware editing is more robust in full-fledged Photoshop CS5, but a version does appear in the Elements spot-healing brush.

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