Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 Windows review:5 stars (Big step-up from 2.0) - Just returned from a workshop at the Santa Fe Photo Workshop. Was amazed to learn how much more I can do with Elements 3.0 compared to 2.0. There was no difference in the class between the capabilities of my Elements 3.0 and the folks who were using Photoshop CS2; however, there were lots of things I would not have been able to do in 2.0. I am sure that for professional photographers, CS2 offers many advantages - but, as a "serious amateur", I am glad I didn't spring for the additional cost. I love the way you can move back and forth between the quick fix function and standard editing with just a click on buttons at the top of the screen. Having the adjustment sliders down the right side of the screen is very convenient - although that makes the photo workspace smaller. For the price, Elements 3.0 is top notch in my opinion. 3 stars (Amazing color-correction, but Windows users beware!) - I feel like an idiot for buying this software. This is a Macintosh application that has been ported to Windows with predictably confusing results.
I was looking for an inexpensive alternative to the various photo editting tools I've acquired with different hardware peripherals. In the past I have relied on an old Adobe product that came with my HP scanner to do simple photo editting, but I was having trouble installing it on my Windows XP machine, and thought it was time to look for something more modern.
A large part of this product suite is a photo organizer that is not as easy to use as Picasa, a free product available from Google.
I have only begun to attempt to use the photo editting software on the JPEG files I have been scanning from slides. I must say that the "auto correction" operation, whatever it does exactly, seems really excellent. I am amazed at how well it corrects the color automatically: I have some slides I shot of the leaning tower of Pisa that were all overexposed, by (my) mistake, and are thus super-saturated with blue. Photoshop appears to be able to restore the greens as if by magic, and I give the product three stars for this feature alone.
As I try to learn to use the photo correction tools to remove some fingerprints from a few slides however I realize that the reason I am having so much trouble using the program is that it was clearly originally written for a Macintosh environment.
I have nothing against Macs per se, but as a Windows and Linux user I find the Macintosh user interface to be utterly baffling.
Some of the Mac influence in this product is obvious, like when the help says "if running on a Windows PC, do an Alt-click" (rather than use the PC's 2nd mouse button) but the most confusing discrepancies from a Windows environment are unfortunately more subtle and thus particularly confusing.
At least, I think that's why this product is so hard for me to use. Having spent my $85 I am determined to learn this product, but I wish some of the glowing reviews on Amazon that convinced me to buy it had warned me that it's (apparently) not a native Windows application.
I should also add that the performance of the Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 Windows is not what I would expect for a modern application written for a state-of-the-art PC: nowadays PC applications do not typically stall when switching between different parts of an application while it loads a different set of plug-ins. 4 stars (Great piece of software.) - I don't know of any other software where you can get this much for this price. It's useful for a lot more than just photo editing
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