People take all sorts of digital photos and want to do a broad range of things with them. Some folks quickly capture and share snapshots, some shoot and make general color corrections in software later, and others want the ability to bend the pixels to their whims.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 10, released last week, caters to each group — and for less than $100 (www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-elements.html).

When people ask me why I'd recommend Photoshop Elements over iPhoto (which is included with every new Mac, or available from the Mac App Store for $14.99), the answer is selection — more specifically, being able to select areas of an image and apply edits, rather than applying them to the entire image as iPhoto does.

For example, Photoshop Elements offers several Guided Edits, which walk you step by step to create an effect. In version 10, a new Depth of Field guided edit lets you select an item in the foreground and blur the background to make it appear that the other items are farther away, or to emphasize one thing by selectively focusing on it. The program's great Quick Selection Tool makes it a three-step project.

You can also accomplish the same effect in the Full edit mode, which gives you access to adjustment layers, retouching tools, layer masks, and advanced tools for doing things like removing objects from a scene using several consecutive photos. In fact, many of the effects, like the new Picture Stack, let you edit all the parts and pieces when you switch to the Full mode.

That said, the changes in Photoshop Elements 10 are welcome but not dramatic compared with the previous version.

When cropping a photo, a new overlay option helps you recompose the image by indicating how the area is divided into thirds, into a simple grid, or into golden ratio (a mathematical method of splitting an area into sections).

The text tools are improved with the addition of the ability to compose text on a path. You can make a selection and wrap the text along the edge, for instance, or draw a free-form path and then apply text to it. The level of control is rougher than I'd like it to be; Elements doesn't have a Pen tool or a way to precisely edit Beziér curves, which are tools used to edit this type of feature in applications such as Photoshop CS5 or Illustrator CS5. This can lead to uneven paths and bumpy text.

Photoshop Elements actually comprises two programs, the Editor and the Organizer. The latter lets you organize your photo library and adds a few new search options for plucking items out of a large collection.

You can find photos based on how visually similar they are to a selected photo, with a slider that emphasizes color or shape in the similarity. The Organizer can also look for specific objects, such as a pet or other recurring item in your library. (It can also identify faces and identify, with your help, of course, specific people, a feature that isn't new in this version.) In my testing, both methods worked fairly well, but with a wide degree of variation. They're good starting points for exploration.

These are just the highlights of what's new in version 10. You'll also find more Guided Edit effects, more options for creating printed materials like books, and more Smart Brush presets and effects for changing the look of your photos.

Photoshop Elements 10 isn't a big upgrade from version 9; if you're already using last year's edition, you can stick with that one without missing much. But if you don't own Elements and are looking for a more advanced tool to edit your photos, or if you own a version that's a few years old, Elements 10 is a great upgrade.

Photoshop Elements 10 costs $99.99; an upgrade from any previous version of the software costs $79.99. It's also available as a bundle with Premiere Elements 10 for $149.99 or as a $119.99 upgrade.

Adobe also sells the previous version of just the Editor component via the Mac App Store, priced at $79.99 (itunes.apple.com/us/app/adobe-photoshop-elements-9/id443128855?mt=12). Adobe hasn't announced whether the Photoshop Elements 10 Editor will be made available, but I wouldn't be surprised. However, unless you really want to use the Mac App Store as the purchase and update mechanism, or you have no interest in using the Organizer, buying the full version of Elements is a much better deal.

Jeff Carlson and Glenn Fleishman write the Practical Mac column for Personal Technology and about technology in general for The Seattle Times and other publications. Send questions to carlsoncolumn@mac.com. More Practical Mac columns at www.seattletimes.com/ columnists.