WHAT IS IT?
Image and photo editing software.
OVERVIEW
When it comes to image editing software, making the right choice depends on having an understanding of the scale of your needs. Creating graphics, cropping, photo enhancing, resizing, and color touch up are near-universal needs in the digital age. Features abound beyond that, but does everyone need them? Maybe not. Before making a purchase, survey your expectations for the product, and be wary of overbuying. In a tough economy, the budget is always a primary concern, so save money where you can.
LIKES
The market is saturated with all sorts of imaging software options. The big daddy of them all is Adobe’s Photoshop, which is full-featured, and even more fully-priced. We made the mistake of thinking we needed the full Photoshop program. So we shelled out the big bucks and dug into the software and .... were overwhelmed. Photoshop is an incredibly powerful software, but it is even more incredibly complicated and hard to figure out. It was clearly much more than we needed to create graphics and edit images and photos for our businesses.
For our money and needs, Photoshop Elements – a scaled-down version of Photoshop—is the product of choice for business professionals that need great imaging software. At a fraction of the cost of Photoshop, buyers get a bundle of features that more than meet the needs of most small businesses and consumers.
 Photoshop Elements really shines when it comes to usability and accessibility. The interface is intuitive and uncluttered, a real plus for new users. The program comes complete with tutorials that make it easy to learn editing, create photo and graphic projects, and share photos with others online.
Photo and graphic editing is the primary focus of the program, and the feature that gets the most use. Of course, you’re going to find tools for cropping, photo enhancement, cloning, and the all-important red-eye removal tool. Photoshop Elements has a “quick fix” feature, which provides photo enhancement in one click. We’re big fans of a feature that makes such quick work of touching up images.
Photoshop Elements has other features that make it shine in comparison to its competitors. Photomerge Exposure is a tool that adjusts photos that have been under or overexposed by blending several photos together. It gets even better, too. Users can manipulate facial features in one photo by taking features from another photo and inserting them on the desired image. Now, it sounds a little Frankenstein’s monster, but stick with us here. Remember that huge group photo where everyone looks perfect, except for that one colleague with his eyes closed?
We use Photoshop Elements daily for all sorts of graphic and image needs - creating banners, buttons, web graphics, editing photos, etc. We've yet to have a task to do that we couldn't get done in PhotoShop Elements. And we didn't have to get an advanced degree to learn how to use it!
That all this power is available at such an attractive price point make it hard to look to other products. Photoshop Elements is a great piece of software that really packs a punch, with plenty of unique features to meet the needs of most users.
DISLIKES
The newest version of Photoshop Elements doesn’t offer much in the way of new features over the previous version. For those looking to upgrade from Photoshop Elements 7, they may not find many compelling reasons to do so.
|
|
"Photoshop Elements is a like a family station wagon with a Formula One racing engine under the hood. It delivers Photoshop's imaging power to consumers and hobbyist photographers in an easy, accessible tabbed interface."
PC World
"Adobe Photoshop Elements is one of the best bargains in the photo-editing market: for a fraction of the cost of Photoshop, you get a full complement of editing tools, guided tutorials for improving your photos, as well as lots of other features aimed at helping you create cards, collages, photo montages and more."
Macworld
|
Get 