Rating: 
Summary: Great program
Review: I own Photoshop and PhotoDeluxe. I frequently used Photodeluxe for quick jobs. I just received Photoshop Elements 2 last week and I'm giving it 5 stars right from the getgo. I find it easy to use and a certain upgrade from Photodeluxe. I used it for fixing photos for a small publication I just did and this was the first time my printer commented on the quality of the photos.
Rating:
Summary: The Sweet Spot for the Intermediate
Review: PhotoShop Elements allows me to do common tasks quickly and painlessly. Some photo editing programs that are aimed at beginners, like Picture-It, do a lot of hand holding, which is ok while you are learning but become very irritating once you get it. Not to mention that it forever to do simple things like crop a picture. Professional programs, like PhotoShop, are very complex and hard to understand how to use and priced way to high for most of us. Between the two is the land of the intermediate. This is where PhotoShop Elements exceeds. It allows someone who knows what he or she needs to do to correct or improve a picture and allows him or her to do it quickly and effortlessly. I don't want to live my life in a darkroom, digital or otherwise. I want to clean-up and fix my pictures and move on with my life. PhotoShop Elements lets me do it faster and easier than any other program I tried.
Rating: 
Summary: Typical Adobe
Review: Lots and lots of features, but intended for a Mac, I guess. Do a "Save As" and your new pic/doc is still "Untitled-1". Close the app down and it prompts you to save everything you've already saved! Worse than that tho is the one-day guarantee. It's buggy, twice in one day I had to delete the preferences file to make it use the color I wanted. I was forced to upgrade from v1.1.... I bought a new 'puter and had downloaded (and BOUGHT, yes) v1.1 to the first one and had deleted the install file (duh) In the end however, I do use it quite a bit in my web business. Gif animations are limited to one frame(layer) rate, which PSE2 is unaware of when you reopen it. And if you save an un-animated gif, you lose your layers (unless there's some feature I haven't noticed!)
Rating:
Summary: Good enough
Review: Even though Adobe's support, pricing, and marketing practices leave quite a bit to be desired, I'd suggest anyone wanting to do some lightweight photo-editing use Elements. While it is far from perfect, it is much better than most of its comptetitors on either the Mac or Windows platforms. Excellent: Photoediting features.
Good: File import/export capabilities, alternative input device support.
Fair: User interface (needlessly complex).
Poor: File browsing, documentation.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome Fun
Review: I upgraded from Photo Deluxe to Photosop Elements 2.0. When I originally ordered it, I was upset because it was not as "Funtionally Diverse" as Photo Deluxe Home Edition. However, this feeling went right out the window after I developed my first few pictures. The editing quality was unsurpassable in comparison. I took a picture of our recent snow accumulation after our blizzard and added in the blizzard element. It really looked like it was still snowing and my camera stayed dry. I cleaned up all my Photo Deluxe images that well lacked this sort of quality. Print software (cards, banners, posters, etc.) is pretty much standard across the board, but this brings editing to a new level.
Rating:
Summary: Can't ask for more for the price
Review: After messing with about six different "lite" photo editing programs that came with various scanners and digicams I had bought, and downloading and being underwhelmed by a 30 day trial copy of Elements 1, I wasn't expecting much when 2.0 came out. But glowing reviews and Amazon's & Adobe's rebate deals made me decide to go ahead and get it. And I am amazed at how much functionality Adobe has stuffed into this program. Combining an excellent image browser, easy and effective one-step retouching, the best cropping tool I've found, and "save-for-web" file compression, at its price it would be a winner with just these alone. But it has so much more capability that gives users lots of room to grow in the sophistication of their image manipulation. In fact, if you don't need to do color separations, I can't see a need to get anything else.
(If only Adobe had chosen to include curves and the healing brush I'd give it six stars, but I guess you can't have everything.)
Rating:
Summary: Simply the BEST for serious image editing
Review: I bought Microsoft Digital Image Pro 7 as an upgrade from Picture It. Was disappointed that it did not handle large image files and had primitive selection tools. Returned it for a refund. I evaluated trial versions of PhotoImact, Paint Shop Pro and Adobe Photoshop Elements2. I picked Elements2 because it is a superb, user-friendly image-editing program. For me, the three key considerations are 1) Powerful image editing tools, 2) Ease of use, and 3) The learning curve. POWERFUL IMAGE EDITING TOOLS?
Elements2 has multiple tools and techniques to accomplish any image-editing task. Cropping, rotating and changing perspective is easy. Changing perspective is useful to "straighten out" vertical lines of buildings when the picture is shot with a wide-angle lens. If the horizon in the picture is slightly off, don't worry. There's a technique (window-info command) to measure the angle of the horizon to a fraction of a degree to determine how much to rotate the picture to make the horizon "perfectly level". The "red eye" correction tool is elegantly simple and yet very precise. Lighting can be adjusted with levels, contrast, brightness and layers commands. Fill flash and studio lighting (filter-render-lighting effects command) can be added to the photo to correct for poor scene lighting when the picture was taken. Color correction and adjustment couldn't be faster or easier; it's all done with a few mouse clicks. One mouse click can eliminate a color cast. The "color variations" command lets you change colors of midtones, highlights, and shadows and adjust saturation and brightness while viewing thumbnail previews of the potential adjustments. And there's a slick "replace color" command to change part or all of the image. At some point in image editing, you want to adjust part of the image, not the entire image. Selection tools make this possible. Elements2 has the best selection tools I've seen. All of the selection tools work together making it fast and easy to select a part of the image with "surgical precision". Most competitive programs either make you work to make selections or they lack precision. Elements2 takes the work out of the selection process. I believe selection tools and layers are the key to serious image editing. Elements2 has the best selection tools and an excellent set of tools to work with layers. It's simply the best software for serious image editing. Professionals will probably opt for the more sophisticated Adobe Photoshop software, but Elements2 is everything I need. Most competitive image editing software does not provide color management tools. But Elements2 includes Adobe Gamma software to adjust your monitor so that your printer can faithfully produce the colors you see on the screen. You have to e-mail Hewlett Packard to learn how to set your printer configuration. Once you've done that, Elements2 gives you several choices in the "print preview" command to fine tune color management of printed output. EASE OF USE?
Adobe's software engineers did their homework. They have tamed power by making almost every image editing task possible by a few mouse clicks. The "quick fix" command is elegantly simple and yet it provides a wide range of adjustments to photos. Once you have used a command it is easy to remember. The user interface is simple. THE LEARNING CURVE?
How long does it take for a novice to learn the program? I viewed the tutorials from the Elements2 welcome screen and reviewed the manual. The tutorials were too simplistic. They taught just one thing to a novice who needs a perspective for this software. The Elements2 manual is "dry" reading, like a dictionary. The manual is not really a tutorial, it's more of a reference assuming you already know the basics of how to use the program. What's the novice to do??? A good way to learn new software is a book. I read "Photoshop Elements2 - Zero To Hero". It is written in a narrative, easy to read form with lots of examples. Within a few hours with the book, I became comfortable with Elements2 and found that I could use the new software easily. If I had not bought a book, I probably would have complained that this software is hard to use. In my opinion, novices can't figure out how to use Elements2 if they limit learning to what Adobe supplies with the software. Do yourself a favor; buy a book written in a narrative format. Spend a few hours with the book. You'll gain a perspective for the program and how to use it. Once you have that, you can use the Element2 manual as a reference to learn about some specific aspect of the program. Also, you can use the recipes and hints that Adobe includes in Elements2. BOTTOM LINE
Photoshop Elements2 = SIMPLY THE BEST FOR SERIOUS IMAGE EDITING.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for me!
Review: Perhaps this software is intended for a more patient and persistent person than myself. I spent about 5 hours trying to do "layers" on this software and found it to be the most counter intutitive piece of software I have ever seen or used.
If I could I would return this software immediately to the manufacturer and never buy an Adobe product again {which I never will}. If you do buy this product expecting a rebate be very careful of the conditions of the rebate.
The rebate coupon is in the box and nothing on the outside tells you what the conditions are. I did not have another specific Adobe product installed {and never will again} and was not elgible for rebate. Customer service and headquarters were not helpful telling me I should have contacted Adobe to see the terms of the rebate. I contend it should be right up front where you can see all the terms of the rebate before purchasing. Typical of Customer Service the world over they were polite but useless.
It is not the principle, it is the money. Still this is a very difficult, counter intitutive, hard to learn and use piece of software. I recommend most anything else for the person that wants to do something with images and layouts and not thumb through poorly written manuals with obscure hard to understand explanations. I was able to do what I wanted to do, make a photo layout on 8-1/2 X 11 and edit it, with HP Photosmart Photo Printing in about 4 minutes.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best bargains in Computerdom
Review: Photoshop 7.0 is a beautiful, amazing beast of a program, the sort that few people know all of, but many know parts of. I know some of that fine app, and am in awe of it. Sadly, it is an expensive beast, and I'm no longer at school, so I can't afford it. Enter Elements. On writing about laptops a few years ago, David Pogue enthused that the best thing about a laptop was that, in a thousand glorious ways, it was just like using a desktop. Well, the best thing about Elements is that, in a thousand glorious ways, it's just like its bigger sibling. Of course, some things are missing. This isn't for professionals. Yet even some of the more consumer-designed features, like the quick fix window and the color balance window are quite useful. It's like professional consumer features that are both powerful and easy to use. The best of both worlds: a great Digital Camera counterpart, without excess features, and the excess price. Not a replacement, but a respectable counterpart. At less than [$$], it's a steal.
Rating:
Summary: Must be for the Pros
Review: This software is NOT easy to use. I am an average software user and generally learn quickly, but I can't figure out what is going on with this software without wasting a bunch of time reading user's manuals. The tools are not self-explanatory and I have yet to enhance a single photo. I usually end up closing the program and using Microsoft Picture It! Publishing, which is WAY more user friendly. If you are looking for an easy to use product to enhance your digital photos, I would NOT recommend this product. It must be for the pros...
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