Adobe Photoshop is great for editing photos, and Adobe Album is pretty good at whipping your collection into shape. But what if you're intimidated by Photoshop's hard-core editing tools -- or its high price -- and you find Album is a bit lightweight for your needs? If you're a Goldilocks about imaging, Adobe might have come up with something that's just right: Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0, the newest version of Adobe's photo-editing and organisational program for hobbyists.
Upside: We hate the phrase end-to-end, but in this case, it looks to be spot on: Photoshop Elements 3.0 has all the tools a hobbyist needs for organising, editing, and sharing photos. On the organisational front, the program offers nifty tools such as hierarchical tagging and stacking of similar images within the File Browser. In addition to the standard Photoshop-like editing tools, Elements 3.0 also offers SmartFix options with before-and-after comparisons for operations such as red-eye removal, removing colour casts, and adjusting brightness. It also features a variation on one of the most useful tools in Photoshop, the Healing Brush, which zaps blemishes and wrinkles -- we dinged last year's version of the program for omitting it. You can also create WMV-format slide shows, burn VCDs, and upload your shots to Adobe Photo Services. The program now supports raw files, too.
Downside: We don't see any red flags, but if you need a broader feature set, you might be happier with Jasc Paint Shop Pro, and if you want your hand held a bit more, Microsoft Digital Image Suite might better serve you.
Outlook: Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 falls in a sweet spot in the photo software market, which too often seems bifurcated between bare-bones, entry-level options and more-advanced management tools. But it faces stiff competition from the likes of Ulead and Microsoft. We'll give you the final word after it ships in coming months.
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30/11/2007, 09:24 PM
rating
6/10
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Andrew Millott
06/10/2007, 07:07 AM
rating
9/10
fantastic software. I wont use anything else.
Pros: Best without the cost of cs
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HJ
06/06/2007, 11:52 PM
rating
2/10
I too just had the same experience as franslagle . I bought this about 1 and half to two years ago. I installed it and never registered it, within a few weeks my computer was fried by lightening. So I put the disk, away with the book and reg. card, only to get it out recently to install on our new computer. Well of course , no reciept, and I have lost the serial number.
Customer support was not supportive at all! I will NEVER purchase an Adobe product again!!!!
I would suggest anyone that does better be good at keeping reciepts, and serial numbers somewhere where they wont get lost, or you will be throwing you money away, as it appears , I just did!
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franslagle
19/07/2005, 07:23 AM
Terrible Customer Support
bought software. Moed across the country and attempted to install. In the commotion of moving, lost serial number. Customer service was incredibly nasty. Rudely told me I should have saved reciept. Many long waits to talk to people. Everyone to whom I talked was rude, patronizing and downright nasty. Bottom line is that they will not hlp me at all, Said i will have to buy another copy. I know that a perfect person would have saved the receipt, but many people are not perfect. For a huge rich company to not help sn elderly perosn to use the product for which she paid $100.00 is very mean.
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Peter C
28/01/2005, 03:42 PM
Excellent basic editing tool
Photoshop Elements is a great value package, combining an excellent photomanager (where you can collate, tag and order all your photos) and a reasonable editor (a cutdown version of the full-blown Photoshop CS). Whilst some may agonise over its stripped down feature set compared with it's big brother, for the money it does a great job, and most tools the average photo enthusiast needs are there.
Documentation is mostly help files, so for the rank beginner a book or perusal of online sites is recommended.
You do need a grunty PC with a reasonable amount of RAM and hard disk space to run Elements.
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