Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not as your only editor
Review: The program was recommended to a photography class by our instructor. I already have Paint Shop Pro 8, but I bought it--only $50 after the rebate, so why not?Here's my only complaint. It does some things that Paint Shop Pro cannot, and it does some things better than PSP. But Paint Shop Pro still does some things missing from 'Elements and does some others much easier than 'Elements. PSP also has some little handy features not in 'Elements--like when selecting or cropping a picture, PSP shows, as you create your rectangle, both the size of the rectangle in pixels and the aspect ratio--so if you're trying to create a 1.25 ratio for an 8x10, you know before it's done. The PSP interface is quite intuitive for long-time Windows users, where 'Elements suffers what I have come to think of as the "Adobe Syndrome". This program is anything but intuitive, and I can only guess that maybe it is Mac thing and is familiar to Mac users. Now that I have used it for a while, I really like some of Photoshop Elements' features, but it could never be my only graphics and photo editor. I don't really mind using two programs, but it surely would be nice to have just one!
Rating: 
Summary: Great program for the amateur digital photographer.
Review: I upgraded to Elements 2.0 from Photoshop LE and have been very pleased. As an amateur photographer who does not use a graphics program all day for my work, Elements does everything I want a photo/graphics program to do, and it's also easy to use.
Rating: 
Summary: Won't work on my new Dell PC with Windows XP
Review: I downloaded the trial version and I had no problem installing it but I could not open it. It checked for plug-ins then went into initalizing and then I got the message "Could not initialize Photoshop Emements because of a program error". I went to the Adobe Web Support site but I could find no help with the error. A seach of the newsgroups showed that several others reported a similar problem but there were no resolutions. I removed the program and went out and purchased Microsoft Digital Image Pro 9. DIP loaded and opened with no problems and it works like a charm. Glad I tried the product on trial since I doubt Adobe customer support would have been much better had I laid out the cash for it.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful software
Review: Of course, as it has much of the functionality of the complete Photoshop it's not the simplest program to master, but everything I've wanted to do to an image has been do-able with a fine degree of control -- and a bit of study. I suggest that if you think you need Photoshop, but you can't think of something insanely difficult or complex that you need it for, Elements will probably suffice, and it's a bargain.
Rating:
Summary: It' Simply The Best Digital Photo Editing Software
Review: First of all, In my opinion this is NOT DIFFICULT software to learn....Some may think it is a bit complicated, but keep in mind...The features are so numerous that there is some navigating to get used to....but once you spend a few hours getting familiar with it, it is a breeze....Some of the best features are the ability to choose the quality of the image that you edit and save, meaning you can adjust the size of the file and if you have alot of pictures like i do, this is great because you can reduce the size of the file, without damaging the image quality....It beats microsofts digital image pro,which i used for a year and is quite good, but doesn't compare with Adobe when it comes to features.....A great complement software package to this program is Adobe's Photoshop Album for categorizing your digital photo collection....
Another Addition if you find the need to add some freehand drawing to the photos is Corel Draw Essentials...does everything photoshop does without the cost.....
Rating:
Summary: Easy to use!
Review: I got this product because it was much cheaper than the original Photoshop program, and since I am not a professional or anything, I don't really need the whole big deal. I just need something that can let me resize, crop, adjust, and fix my photos the way that I need to. You can also use this as a graphics program if you are into making web sites and stuff like that, and you can specify the resolution and size of it in pixels, inches, cm, mm, points, and picas. You can duplicate your photo, transfrom it, skew it, rotate it, distort it, burn-in, dodge, add perspective, add layers, fix layers, adjust lighting, contrast, color, sharpness, and fix redeye. It has levels, layers and a lot of painting and drawing tools. It also helps you make your own web page layouts and photo albums. There are also lots of filters that can let you have some fun with photos and drawings, like textures, blurs, paint brush strokes, etc. You can make your photo look like a painting if you want to! It's really easy to use, and it's fun to work with! It's VERY user friendly. I highly recommend it!
Rating:
Summary: The ideal image editing software
Review: This is an ideal product -- simple to use if you just want to do the basics, but with an enormous range of capabilities, the most important of which are easily accessible from toolbars. Amazon's editorial review describes Photoshop Elements as being a "barer bones" version of Photoshop 7.0, the $600 program used by professionals. It's true that there are a few advanced features in Photshop that didn't make into Elements, but for the vast majority of amateurs, Elements has everything you need. It's far superior to the "lite" versions of software that are often bundled with digital cameras in both its interface and its features. (And if you want what Adobe left out, buy "The Hidden Power of Photoshop Elements 2", available from Amazon.) Furthermore, it accepts many of the add-on tools ("plug-ins") that work in Photoshop 7.0 so you can expand its functionality. The manual is OK and the help screens are good, and there are several good books you can buy to teach you the subtleties of digital image editing and of Elements. There's everything here to satisfy the beginner and the experienced amateur as well. Five stars for ease of use, features, expandability and value.
Rating:
Summary: unspeakably atrocious engineering
Review: In the year 2003, it is shocking that a program with such a vile user interface is marketable. Even the product's fans admit that it's so complex you need a book to use it. They accept this as the price of power. That's nonsense: we're talking about editing photos, not sequencing the human genome. PhotoShop Elements is not complex because it's powerful, it's complex because it's badly designed. Even the simplest operations, like "Quick Fix", are cumbersome and error-prone. (Example: there are only three adjustments in Quick Fix. The default order in which PSE applies them is the *wrong order* according to Adobe's own documentation!) Clunky control panels take up so much screen real estate that you can't see the picture you're editing at useful resolution. You're stuck with either a very small picture, or opening and closing the controls all the time. If you've ever used FrameMaker, PhotoShop will feel instantly familiar. It is brimming with the same needless complexity, unnatural abstractions, and maximally inconvenient interfaces that made Frame the steaming pile that it is. Oh, one last thing: don't believe what you read about PSE's unsharp mask being better than in-camera sharpening. My Nikon Coolpix 990 and Canon PowerShot S50 both do better sharpening, with fewer artifacts (jaggies, Moire patterns), than PSE. One positive comment: you can download a fully functional 30-day trial version from Adobe's web site for free, as I did. I *highly* recommend that you do this before forking over your hard-earned cash. Kudos to Adobe for believing in their products enough to do this.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: I do a lot of digital photography. I didn't want to fork out 100s of dollars on Photoshop. I ended up buying Elements instead. This product does everything I need (and more). Want to touch up a photo? Then use Elements. This program provides a simple user interface that provides users with a lot of power in editing their images.
Rating:
Summary: Best of the bunch
Review: I recently purchased this package, and compared to the other programs I have tried, this one does seem to have the most power for its price range. It is very easy to enhance photos that are a little overexposed, underexposed, or need to have the color saturation tweaked. It did not come with the exact printer template I wanted, but I found a read me file that gave me enough information so I was able to easily open an existing printer template in notepad and modify it to give me the template I wanted. It was also a simple matter to create a slide show in PDF format that I could send to others. They only needed to have the Acrobat reader to view the slide shows. The ability to make panoramas from a series of shots is the best I have seen (compared to 3 other products). This program is definitely a keeper. I have uninstalled all the others that I tried before finding this one.
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