Home > Consumer Reviews > Adobe Photoshop Elements 1.0

I am an avid amateur photographer, with the emphasis on amateur. I am on my second digital camera (Canon G1, first was Kodak DC480), and I've been printing my own digital photos for almost 2 years.

During that time I've tried many packages, from Photoshop LE, to QImage, to Printshop, to PhotoDeluxe, and I've never been satisified. What I wanted was a solution that gave me reasonable control over the process while still making it simple. I was beginning to feel that I wanted too much until Adobe released Elements.

In my opinion Elements is the Holy Grail for the average amateur digital photographer who wants to print AND edit photos. Now if you have no interest in EDITing your photos, then spend your money elsewhere (Qimage is a good start). Or if you are a professional or a web graphics jockey then go with the latest version of Photoshop. Otherwise, buy this.

Elements makes the process as simple as you want it to be. With many one-click functions, you can trim to size, adjust levels (color spectrum), Sharpen, and print. The hardest part is Sharpen, but after a few trial experiments you'll find settings that work for you most of the time (or buy a 3rd party add=in, like the Nik Sharpen Pro solution that I purchased).

Save yourself some aggrevation. Adobe got it right with the 1.0 version of Elements. Buy it.

I've been using Photoshop Elements for a couple of months now, not only for photoediting and printing, but also for design of backgrounds for web pages. Photoshop Elements is primarily used as part of my business (I use it in the design of marketing materials and art for webpages).

The program is a perfect fit for serious hobbyist. It also meets the needs of business users who are cost-conscious and do not need the full power of PhotoShop. Most of the programs features focus on delivering useful graphics and photo enhancement tools to the user. PhotoShop Elements provides few few kitschy filters and tacky borders that so many bundled programs force on users, apparently in the belief that most of us want to use photoeditors to send fun-house images of the family pet with purple and yellow flowered borders to all our friends.

PhotoElements offers an immensely powerful suite of tools focused on the results desired by the serious hobbyist (which is not to say they haven't included their a few of their own kitschy folders). While PhotoElements offers a wide variety of filters and special effects, most of the filters have a meaningful professional purpose, the filters produce excellent quality results, and most offer the users a high degree of control over the special effects.

Unlike some bundled packages, PhotoElements works nearly flawlessly. It seems to manage memory well and I've never had a crash while using the program.

PhotoElements paper user guide is excellent for a program in this price range. The only criticism would be that I found the on-line help, which downloads directly to the Internet, somewhat clumsy and poorly structured. It seems difficult to formulate search terms that get the desired result and for someone on a dial-up connection I would think this would be a painfully slow way to access help (I have high-speed cable).

This software offers extraordinary value for the price. It offers at least 70-80% of the power of Photoshop for little more than the price of a game. If you buy a digital camera, purchase and install PhotoElements before you waste disk space on the bundled photoediting software that came with your camera.

This was the best [inexpensive]software purchase I've ever made.

I must say that I was highly skeptical of this software at first. I have never been a fan of "lite" products. Photo Deluxe was, in my opinion, a poor excuse for image editing software. I was afraid this was just going to be Photo Deluxe 2. I was wrong. Elements has the tools that the amateur/hobbyist needs. I'd even venture to guess that most web developers could get by with this as well. Those familiar with Adobe's pro version of Photoshop will likely not miss a thing. In addition, I've found it to be much faster that Paint Shop Pro 7. I run a 950 Mhz AMD Athlon, and PSP just feels sluggish. Elements is very responsive.

I won't go into all the features that I think make it an excellent buy, but the one that stands out is the photomerge. It allows you to take several individual photos having overlap and stitch them into a panorama. I had some photos like this that I took years ago on a trip, and I seriously doubted the software would be able to stitch them together. It worked flawlessly with no tweaking or fooling around. In about 1 minute they were seamlessly merged.

In addition to this, I've found it very easy to use. I've been fooling around with the pro version of Photoshop for several years, and I never knew how to use 30%+ of the features. Elements guides you through without insulting your intelligence.

If you're joining the digital photography masses with the purchase of a scanner and/or a digital camera, this is a "must own" piece of software. Forget Paint Shop Pro or the junky stuff that came with your imaging device and just buy this. It's easy to see why the pros have been such big Adobe fans all these years.

Unlike many of the other reviewers, my experience with photo editing software is quite limited - I've only used a few simple programs, such as Adobe PhotoDeluxe, and PhotoShop LE. They did what I wanted, but in a cumbersome way. I also have a roommate with who's an amateur photographer with PhotoShop, so I know a little about how the full version of the program works.

Photoshop Elements reminds me of most basic programs in its feature list, but it seems to be extremely optimized for the beginning digital photographer. I.E., me! Menus and options all take into account what people like me most want to do with a picture, (redeye, cropping, sizing, lighten/darken, colorbalence) and make it a matter of a couple of clicks to get more or less exactly the picture that I have in mind.

I suspect that the people who are complaining about this program are too sophisticated for what's intended to be a beginner's product. So, my recommendation is that if you're a beginner, buy this. You'll think it's wonderful. If you're looking for a program that truly full featured, bite the bullet and buy the full version of Photoshop, like most people who think of photography as either a full-blown hobby or actual profession.

I love this program.

Until recently, there was Photoshop 5.5 LE. Well, perhaps this program could have an alias of Photoshop 6.0 UL (ultra-lite).
Don't misunderstand, I'm not knocking this program at all, in fact, quite the contrary. I'm writing this review to sing its praises.

Adobe has attempted in the past to do consumer-level editing programs, i.e. the Photo Deluxe series. From my experience with these, they've left much to be desired. Not so with Photoshop Elements. For the most part, Adobe got it right this time for the market they're obviously shooting for...everybody who can't afford or doesn't need Photoshop.

I've got this program loaded up alongside Photoshop 6 and Ulead PhotoImpact 7. I do photography professionsally and I've used Photoshop for a long time, but everything you may have heard is true. Elements does many of the Photoshop functions without the cost or the learning curve. This is a very easy program to use. The recipes are a great extra and can come in real handy.
The menus and effects all interface and look just like they do in Photoshop. Most all the effects and filters in Photoshop are in Elements, plus a few. And there is still the capability to add plug-ins and use tablets. The panorama function takes some practice, but once figured out, it works well.

There are a couple things I'd like to see Adobe do should they release an updated version. One, it would be nice to be able to work with channels. That's a great function in Photoshop if you like to dabble in black and white. But maybe the technology behind adding that makes it cost prohibitive. And two, let's get real with the printing here. This is one function that's exactly as it is in Photoshop and it shouldn't be. It's the usual "Picture Package" function that Adobe uses. Although it has it's place, most average shooters making prints of family functions or weekend getaways don't want multiple copies of the same picture printed in various sizes on the same sheet of paper. There needs to be the choices of all the popular templates so that different pictures can be printed on the same sheet. Fix that, Adobe, and you'll make a massive improvement in a what's already a great program. Then we don't have to jump to another program to do our printing.

Other than that, Elements could probably fulfill 70% of my needs for this type of software. It's the other 30% where I need Photoshop. If you want to function like Photoshop and keep your bank account intact at the same time, give Elements a try. I don't think you'll be disappointed.