Customer Rating: 
Summary: Almost a full-sized PS without the full-sized price
Comment: I've used the 'real' Photoshop for a number of years professionally but was hesitant to pay the 'real' Photoshop price for home use. Elements 3 lacks the bells and whistles and uses some 'short cuts' that seem to me kind of crude but for 90% of folks E3 is more than adequate. I am very happy with E3. (Beware of what rebates maybe offered by Adobe, however. If offered, read the 'fine print' if there is fine print. I felt mislead but Amazon 'made good.')
Customer Rating:
Summary: Photoshop Elements 2 FAR superior to this disappointment
Comment: I've been very happy with PE2...works nicely, not clunky, even the great sunflower confronting one on opening. So I thought I'd upgrade to PE 3 -- a great mistake and waste of money. I'm still using PE 2; PE 3 is clunky in its operation (and my computer has over 500 meg or RAM and 1.5 ghtz processor, 160 gig hard drive). There is just no comparison in the ease of operation with P.Elements 2 and this new Vers. 3, which also takes forever to load as it goes thru all the fonts or some such thing. Finally, to add insult to injury, they've removed the pretty sunflower and you're confronted with this grinning woman as you open the program, and no way to switch her out for another pic...jeez, give me back the sunflower any day. P.E. 3 may have a few more features, but nominally so over P.E. 2, and the trade off does not begin to compensate for the overall clunky operation of the P.E.3 program. What a waste of money!!
Sincerely, disappointed buyer of P.E. 3, Robert A. Fesmire
Customer Rating:
Summary: WARNING
Comment: DON'T BUY THIS PROGRAM UNLESS YOU WANT HOURS OF HELL TRYING TO INSTALL IT.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Feel like I've been ripped off
Comment: Photoshop Elements 3.0 does not work properly on my computer. I've tried to contact Adode for technical support, but they do not provide free technical support. They charge $40 per question.
Do not purchase products developed by Adobe. They are a waste of your money. The technology is great, but Adobe should support their products.
Customer Rating:
Summary: One step forward, two steps back
Comment: I downloaded the trial version and immediately saw that the program was buggy and unstable - started getting weird error messages as this hawg was acting like Beetle Bailey on downers trying to get its act together (my gig of ram, blah, blah, didn't help). I think it has trouble accessing its on self, it's such a blubbertub. Just about sextupled in disk space occupied over ver. 2.
So then I download the 3.01 update, thinking these Adobe people worked some of the kinks out, but no - the update couldn't even recognize the program, and quit. Repeated process - same result.
Next step - uninstall, then proceed to clean up the biggest mess I've ever seen left behind in the registry and elsewhere. Registry Mechanic just about choked getting rid of all the debris. Then I check the installation folder and just about all the stuff was still there!
If you're Mom and Pop, you sure don't need this program *anyhow* - even if it weren't such a resource hippo. Get something like Paint.net 2.0 - it's free. Of course it's poor Mom and Pop that Adobe sought to target by throwing in all that organizer junk and prettying the thing up to look so friendly and inviting - steer them more to Elements and the heavy hitters more to CS.
And for the folks left behind, just throw that 16-bit deception (which has been well-addressed in other reviews) at them so they'll have something to gnaw on. Good work, Adobe!
Summary: Almost a full-sized PS without the full-sized price
Comment: I've used the 'real' Photoshop for a number of years professionally but was hesitant to pay the 'real' Photoshop price for home use. Elements 3 lacks the bells and whistles and uses some 'short cuts' that seem to me kind of crude but for 90% of folks E3 is more than adequate. I am very happy with E3. (Beware of what rebates maybe offered by Adobe, however. If offered, read the 'fine print' if there is fine print. I felt mislead but Amazon 'made good.')
Customer Rating:
Summary: Photoshop Elements 2 FAR superior to this disappointment
Comment: I've been very happy with PE2...works nicely, not clunky, even the great sunflower confronting one on opening. So I thought I'd upgrade to PE 3 -- a great mistake and waste of money. I'm still using PE 2; PE 3 is clunky in its operation (and my computer has over 500 meg or RAM and 1.5 ghtz processor, 160 gig hard drive). There is just no comparison in the ease of operation with P.Elements 2 and this new Vers. 3, which also takes forever to load as it goes thru all the fonts or some such thing. Finally, to add insult to injury, they've removed the pretty sunflower and you're confronted with this grinning woman as you open the program, and no way to switch her out for another pic...jeez, give me back the sunflower any day. P.E. 3 may have a few more features, but nominally so over P.E. 2, and the trade off does not begin to compensate for the overall clunky operation of the P.E.3 program. What a waste of money!!
Sincerely, disappointed buyer of P.E. 3, Robert A. Fesmire
Customer Rating:
Summary: WARNING
Comment: DON'T BUY THIS PROGRAM UNLESS YOU WANT HOURS OF HELL TRYING TO INSTALL IT.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Feel like I've been ripped off
Comment: Photoshop Elements 3.0 does not work properly on my computer. I've tried to contact Adode for technical support, but they do not provide free technical support. They charge $40 per question.
Do not purchase products developed by Adobe. They are a waste of your money. The technology is great, but Adobe should support their products.
Customer Rating:
Summary: One step forward, two steps back
Comment: I downloaded the trial version and immediately saw that the program was buggy and unstable - started getting weird error messages as this hawg was acting like Beetle Bailey on downers trying to get its act together (my gig of ram, blah, blah, didn't help). I think it has trouble accessing its on self, it's such a blubbertub. Just about sextupled in disk space occupied over ver. 2.
So then I download the 3.01 update, thinking these Adobe people worked some of the kinks out, but no - the update couldn't even recognize the program, and quit. Repeated process - same result.
Next step - uninstall, then proceed to clean up the biggest mess I've ever seen left behind in the registry and elsewhere. Registry Mechanic just about choked getting rid of all the debris. Then I check the installation folder and just about all the stuff was still there!
If you're Mom and Pop, you sure don't need this program *anyhow* - even if it weren't such a resource hippo. Get something like Paint.net 2.0 - it's free. Of course it's poor Mom and Pop that Adobe sought to target by throwing in all that organizer junk and prettying the thing up to look so friendly and inviting - steer them more to Elements and the heavy hitters more to CS.
And for the folks left behind, just throw that 16-bit deception (which has been well-addressed in other reviews) at them so they'll have something to gnaw on. Good work, Adobe!