» Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 [OLD VERSION]

Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 [OLD VERSION] Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Product - better than 5.0 version?
Comment: I've used Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0, 3.0 and now 5.0. I found that the 3.0 version was generally easy to learn to use and could handle most of the problems and modifications that were needed with many of my digital photos.

Be aware that obviously none of the Elements series is meant to replace a full version of Photoshop. I use the full Photoshop on more difficult photo problems or those in which I need to be considerably more professional. But for me, the learning curve on Photoshop is often quite steep.

A couple of months ago, I bought the 5.0 version of Elements thinking it might give easier and faster access to some of the full Photoshop features. I found that it did not seem to give me all that much more utility than the 3.0 and it felt slower and a little less agile in moving from photo to photo. I must admit this may be due to my computer or my inability to appropriately adjust the 5.0 program based on the rather skimpy 5.0 user manual.

For the money and ease of use I think that the average amateur photographer would find the 3.0 most helpful.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Makes You want to Punch Your Screen
Comment: I know that Photoshop is considered the gold standard of photo editing software and all that, but man, does Elements have to be so frustrating to use? Has any programmer that built this code ever actually tried to use it to fix a picture?

I wanted something more powerful than the free photo software available online or that comes with a new camera, but I didn't want to have to sign up for a Continuing Education class, either. Yes, it seems powerful, and all that, but it is so hard to get up to speed to know whether you are harnessing all that power. I am not computer illiterate. I use Excel, AutoCAD, databases, etc, and lot of job-proprietary software at my work every day.

I bought 3.0 after reading reviews of how buggy 4.0 was. Elements 5.0 had not yet come out.

A Few Frustrations:

(1)Adobe did not see fit to provide a manual with the software, so I have now spent just about as much on 3rd party manuals as I did on the software. There is a short "getting started" manual. It is useless.

(2) The Organizer. Why did Adobe think they were so much more clever than Microsoft and come up with another way to manage your files? I simply want to go to a directory tree, open a file, work on it and then have the option to overwrite with Save or make a new one with Save As. No, Elements wants you to work in the Organizer, where you have to labor to find the actual location of the file you have up.

(3) The Share functions. The photo album utility is surprisingly inflexible as to the sizes and orientations of the pictures printed out. I printed out a number of pages with 4 photos per page, and the images came out about 2" x 2" each. You can stretch them bigger, BUT YOU MUST DO EVERY ONE INDIVIDUALLY, not as a batch. The HP Photosmart that came free with my printer does a much better job here.

(4) DVD burning. I have yet to succesfully burn a photo DVD with the included burner. Elements locks up every time.

(5) New Version Every Year. Why? Just get one right.

(6) Resource Hog. I had to double the RAM in my computer just to get this thing to run.

(7) No Tutorials. I could be made a little happier if I had some idea as to the best workflow to follow to work on a picture. Okay, I open up a file needing some work. Do I want to work on colors or brightness first? What about Layers, when is the best time to put them in? When is the best time to Sharpen? Save? Convert from this file format to another?

(8) Saving Files. Be aware that I have not found a way to prevent saving multiple copies of a file whether I want to or not. Every time I Save, whether I want to overwrite or not, I get a new file. If you are working with a HUGE .PSP or .RAW file, this gets to be a big problem. A 1MB .JPG file can easily become a 100MB - that's right - 100MB .PSP file. Better have a big hard drive. This leads to:

(9) Deleting Files. Never delete or move to another directory a photo again through Windows Explorer or My Computer. Use the Organizer. It freaks Elements out to not find a file there that was there the last time it was started up. It will make your life unhappy.

(10) Adobe Gamma. It would have been nice to know about that little feature BEFORE I worked on about 300 pictures!

This is just a start.

It is easy to kick MS software, but there is one thing about MS products, they know how to make them intuitive. Adobe, fugedabodit!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Decent product, but overrated
Comment: This is a decent product, but there are cheaper and easier-to-use products out there that are a better fit for the average person who simply wants to organize, share, and print/produce digital pictures. Below are my pros and cons:

Pros:
1. Easy import of photos directly from camera.
2. Pretty good interface for viewing/organizing photos in a central location (a little busy at first but fairly intuitive once you get the hang of it)
3. Easy sharing options (again, once you figure out where the right buttons are).
4. A dizzying array of photo editing tools.

Cons:
1. A dizzying array of photo editing tools. If you are planning projects which require a lot of layout, editing, layering, etc then you might need some of these, but if you are like 95% of the rest of us digital camera owners and just want to do some basic editing (redeye removal, etc.) before sharing then you will find that most of this stuff is overkill.
2. Very slow program startup time. It is baffling as to why, but this seems to be the norm for all Adobe products.
3. Mediocre product integration. If you have a picture in the viewer and want to do some quick editing, then it opens a different editing module. This editing module is "integrated" in that there are buttons for easily switching between the viewer and the editor, but on my brand-spanking-new computer it still takes 3-5 seconds each time I want to launch the editing module.
4. Not as intuitive as all the professional reviews say it is. Don't get me wrong, it is fairly well layed out once you get the hang of it, but if you are new to photo organization/management then don't expect to just jump in; it will take some ramp-up time. There are some very good, free third party tutorials available online to help you with this (which nicely fill in the gaps left by the virtually worthless Adobe documentation).

In summary, the best word I have to describe this product is... annoying. Bottom-line: It is a decent product but fails to live up to the hype. For $100 I expect something much more intuitive out of the box, with much tighter integration.

If you have projects in mind where you'll be working with photo layouts, etc then I would recommend you check this product out, as it does have a deep feature list. But if you're just trying to get those photos off of your digital camera, get rid of that redeye, and then e-mail them to friends/family or upload them to one of the online services, then I would check out Picasa 2.0 (free from Google) before investing $100 in this product.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: I'm satisfied
Comment: I've had this program for a year. I give it a four because it's not perfect, but it's very good. I edited a professional portrait for my first project. It turned out very well. I have a 16x20 of it hanging on my wall, so even blown up, the detail is very good. From there I've cut people out of one picture, and put them on an edited background, along with other possibilities.
I don't like the cutout with anchor tool; touch the edge of the picture, and it's all over the place. Instead, I use the eraser. I can erase away all unwanted details. I also like the stamp tool. It gives all the inuendos of shades and ripples so it looks like the original picture.
This is an extensive program. The possibilities are endless. I can use it as a beginner, and continually learn - - I don't have to understand it all at once.
I bought the bundle. I've made about a hundred movies with Premiere Elements 1.0. It likes over 40gb free hard drive and 1.5gb ram to run smoothly. Anything less is frustrating because it crashes constantly. Nonetheless, the two programs are compatible. I love having an image in Premiere Elements, and being able to edit it in Photoshop without removing the picture from either program.
AND I forgot to mention that Photoshop can import video clips to allow you to separate one frame, and you can edit that photo. It's all powerful software with the equipment we have to operate it. It's all very, very good.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Only for the digitally educated folks
Comment: I bought this product because it had such great reviews and it appeared to meet all my needs. I have had it over 6 months now and I still can't get the hang of it. It is NOT user friendly. I try to use all the help features but it takes so long to do just one little thing that by the time I am done editing one pic - I am burnt out and don't want to touch it for awhile.

If you are already up to speed with this type of software - it is really cool - but for new users - stay away from it.

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