Photoshop Elements or something else?

[Matt Meiser]

After seeing Photoshop Elements at a photography demo at the June SE Michighan Woodworkers meeting, I decided that maybe it is time to upgrade my 8 year old Photoshop LE license. Since it has been 8 years since I last shopped for this type of software and the market has completely changed, is there anything else I should look at before I pull the trigger on Elements?

[John Schreiber]

Just to tag along on Matt's question, my daughter has been using Photo Shop in school and thinks it's the bees knees. The price makes a purchase out of the question for us. Any other options?

[Kevin Beck]

I've used Photoshop Elements for about 8 months now. I also use Premiere Elements for my video editing. Neither of these has all the features of the higher-priced applications but they are just fine for my purposes.

I used Google Picassa for organizing my photos before I purchased Elements. It works fine as well and you can't beat the price.


Kevin

[Jim Becker]

I happen to really like PhotoShop Elements. And if you have a video camera, the bundle with Premier Elemnets is a very good deal.

[David G Baker]

Matt,
I use an older version of Photoshop. Several of my friends use Photoshop Elements and love it. From my talking to them and from what I have read on the Net about it the program is 98% of what you need for working with photos. I find that I use a microscopic amount of the capabilities of Photoshop and if I ever upgrade it will be to Photoshop Elements. Elements also has a very good tutorial that cuts the learning curve quite a bit.

[Randy Klein]

Just to tag along on Matt's question, my daughter has been using Photo Shop in school and thinks it's the bees knees. The price makes a purchase out of the question for us. Any other options?

John, Photoshop Elements is different than the full-blown Photoshop. It is very affordable, whereas Photoshop is very expensive.

As far as I know, Elements has less features, but I think you'd have to be a professional photographer to miss any of those features.

I have Elements and think it's very nice.

[Matt Meiser]

My ancient Photoshop LE doesn't have any of the nice features for automatically fixing things, making images a certain pixel and file size for the web, etc.

John, I'm not sure if your daughter would qualify, but you might check into pricing on a student license for full Photoshop. When was about to graduate from college, I stocked up on software at a fraction of retail cost. I think MS Office 95 was under $100. My youngest brother is doing the same right now and I don't think the prices have changed much.

[Keith Outten]

Matt,

I have an extra copy of Photoshop Elements somewhere in my shop office you can have. It's a legal license, in the past I have received several copies with hardware that I purchased.

Let me know.

.

[Joe Pelonio]

When my son took it in high school he purchased a legal educational copy for a lot less and since he's moved out it's still here for us to use if needed. Though since I have several others like Freehand and Corel X-3 I rarely use it.

Wow, I better get offline, deafening thunder and close lightning just started!

[Art Mulder]

I've been using the free image editing tool Gimp on Linux (or MacOS -- it's also available for Windows (http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html), as well) for a few years, and I've gotten it to do most of what I need. However, this thread reminds me that I've been meaning to pick up PS Elements for a while now. The demo on their website makes it look very slick. Furthermore, Gimp is something that my wife will likely never touch, and Elements probably will be something that she does.

[David DeCristoforo]

Don't overlook Corel's (used to be JASC) Paint Shop Pro
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1155872554948

Photoshop power at an "elements" price. I used this for many years and switched to Photoshop only because I got a real steal of a deal on a suite of Adobe software. Also, PSP only comes in windoze flavor and I prefer to work on Macs. Of course with the Intel Macs, you can have the best of both. But PSP is an awesome image editing program esp. considering the price.

[Matt Meiser]

We had Paint Shop Pro licenses for all of the developers where I used to work for basic image manipulation. I didn't realize Corel bought them--our licenses were a few years old. Have they also added some of the automatic/magic stuff that Elements has?

[Henry Cavanaugh]

I have a new computer XP Media edition. I was looking to purchase the Photoshop Elements and the Video part unless someone says its on my computer in media edition at the same level?

[Ned Bulken]

I use elements every day at work, primarily to correct real estate photos for parallax and so forth. Very limited scope, but I do 50 to 80 photos a day. I'm seriously considering getting a copy for the home computer. My youngest son loves his digital camera, so if that interest develops (sorry, had to do it) I will be buying a copy for home use.

[Mack Cameron]

I've had PSE 3 for about 3 - 4 years now. There is a little frustration in using it, but the biggest drawback I have found is it can take over your life. Time passes so quickly 3 - 4 hrs on the computer without realizing it. I don't use it that often due to too many other things getting in the way. I do subscribe to their mag. Elements Techniques and have every issue.

They have a great forum, where everyone will help out with difficulties one has. One lady from England "Wendy" has over 30,000 posts and her digital editing is just amazing.

I am considering upgrading to PSE 5 just for the sake of having it.

[Henry Cavanaugh]

Has anyone ever used "Photo Explosion delux". It comes on three disc.so it must be large program but is it as good or better than elements.?

[Jim Becker]

'Never heard of that one, Henry...