Home > Consumer Reviews > Adobe Elements 2.0 [OLD VERSION]

I found it very difficult to get through the operation of the layers function in this software. The information provided did not explain clearly how to establish a background layer that would allow me to resize and join two photos. Seems pretty simple, but it wasn't. I wouldn't recommend buying this software without taking a class to learn how to use it.

I bought Microsoft Digital Image Pro 7 as an upgrade from Picture It. Was disappointed that it did not handle large image files and had primitive selection tools. Returned it for a refund. I evaluated trial versions of PhotoImact, Paint Shop Pro and Adobe Photoshop Elements2. I picked Elements2 because it is a superb, user-friendly image-editing program.

For me, the three key considerations are 1) Powerful image editing tools, 2) Ease of use, and 3) The learning curve.

POWERFUL IMAGE EDITING TOOLS?
Elements2 has multiple tools and techniques to accomplish any image-editing task.

Cropping, rotating and changing perspective is easy. Changing perspective is useful to "straighten out" vertical lines of buildings when the picture is shot with a wide-angle lens. If the horizon in the picture is slightly off, don't worry. There's a technique (window-info command) to measure the angle of the horizon to a fraction of a degree to determine how much to rotate the picture to make the horizon "perfectly level".

The "red eye" correction tool is elegantly simple and yet very precise.

Lighting can be adjusted with levels, contrast, brightness and layers commands. Fill flash and studio lighting (filter-render-lighting effects command) can be added to the photo to correct for poor scene lighting when the picture was taken.

Color correction and adjustment couldn't be faster or easier; it's all done with a few mouse clicks. One mouse click can eliminate a color cast. The "color variations" command lets you change colors of midtones, highlights, and shadows and adjust saturation and brightness while viewing thumbnail previews of the potential adjustments. And there's a slick "replace color" command to change part or all of the image.

At some point in image editing, you want to adjust part of the image, not the entire image. Selection tools make this possible. Elements2 has the best selection tools I've seen. All of the selection tools work together making it fast and easy to select a part of the image with "surgical precision". Most competitive programs either make you work to make selections or they lack precision. Elements2 takes the work out of the selection process.

I believe selection tools and layers are the key to serious image editing. Elements2 has the best selection tools and an excellent set of tools to work with layers. It's simply the best software for serious image editing. Professionals will probably opt for the more sophisticated Adobe Photoshop software, but Elements2 is everything I need.

Most competitive image editing software does not provide color management tools. But Elements2 includes Adobe Gamma software to adjust your monitor so that your printer can faithfully produce the colors you see on the screen. You have to e-mail Hewlett Packard to learn how to set your printer configuration. Once you've done that, Elements2 gives you several choices in the "print preview" command to fine tune color management of printed output.

EASE OF USE?
Adobe's software engineers did their homework. They have tamed power by making almost every image editing task possible by a few mouse clicks. The "quick fix" command is elegantly simple and yet it provides a wide range of adjustments to photos. Once you have used a command it is easy to remember. The user interface is simple.

THE LEARNING CURVE?
How long does it take for a novice to learn the program? I viewed the tutorials from the Elements2 welcome screen and reviewed the manual. The tutorials were too simplistic. They taught just one thing to a novice who needs a perspective for this software. The Elements2 manual is "dry" reading, like a dictionary. The manual is not really a tutorial, it's more of a reference assuming you already know the basics of how to use the program.

What's the novice to do??? A good way to learn new software is a book. I read "Photoshop Elements2 - Zero To Hero". It is written in a narrative, easy to read form with lots of examples. Within a few hours with the book, I became comfortable with Elements2 and found that I could use the new software easily.

If I had not bought a book, I probably would have complained that this software is hard to use. In my opinion, novices can't figure out how to use Elements2 if they limit learning to what Adobe supplies with the software.

Do yourself a favor; buy a book written in a narrative format. Spend a few hours with the book. You'll gain a perspective for the program and how to use it. Once you have that, you can use the Element2 manual as a reference to learn about some specific aspect of the program. Also, you can use the recipes and hints that Adobe includes in Elements2.

BOTTOM LINE
Photoshop Elements2 = SIMPLY THE BEST FOR SERIOUS IMAGE EDITING.

All web sites can be grouped with their pornographic brethren in this respect: that, like the intuitive Brethren of the Supreme Court, most of us know a good web site when we see it. The care, style, and arrangement of text and images shows whether a person took some time and trouble with their design. It also shows whether the webmaster has any talent for page composition.

And, like most people who know something good when they see it (rather than having the ability to describe it taxonomically), I have no ability to actually make a good web site myself...Instead, we'll get into something that's been one of my main bugaboos for a long time - the ability to make pictures and text look good. That's not the same as composing an overall page, but we're talking baby steps here.

And by "looking good" I don't mean, necessarily, a picture with good content or composition, or well-written text. I mean a picture or text that looks good; something that tickles the senses... Y'know, like with a small, stylistic border, or vignette fading around the edges, or a drop shadow careening off the bottom right corner. I'm talking about stuff that your digital camera won't do. And, until not so long ago, your economically attainable drawing program wouldn't do it either.

PhotoShop Elements, a sort of subset program of the big...PhotoShop program, seems to me like it was made for amateur web designers. And whaddaya know - the Adobe web page says that's its purpose. It comes with the tools a person needs to add that extra bit of visual sweetness to a picture or 3-D beveled euphony to a group of words that really makes the image or text sing for the site. Assuming one has the talent to make a site at all, that is.

PhotoShop Elements comes with the tools that some of the truncated Adobe programs included in a digital camera's shrink wrap generally provide. This would include auto-adjustment of hue, contrast and brightness, straightening, rotation, color and background filters, black and white or negative switching, cropping - need I go on? What does one generally want to do with a raw photograph? Elements does that just fine, and adds things not found on the spare product that came with your camera: tools such as "dodge, burn and sponge" can be applied to specific areas of the photo to create the effect you need.

But my fun with Elements starts when I commence with the special effects. Like, for instance, 3-D Text-beveling, in various styles. Start with a blank slate, pick a font, type a few words, and start playing with it. Change its color. Add drop shadows, which, like people, come in different depths, intensities and degrees of coarseness. Add inner glows. Outer glows. Chunk in some background scenes, in the text itself or behind it. The text or picture can be bent, distorted, exaggerated, minimized, corrupted and bowdlerized. It's there for you to put into your web page.

The tools to do these things are found, mostly, in the Layer Styles tab on the top of your Elements window. Well, OK, not all the tools are there - but let me suggest Layer Styles as a place to start playing. Once you learn what a layer is - and thankfully, they don't complicate the learning process by assuming you already know all this - you can work on each layer and then pile 'em on each other.

And you all know that digital or scanned pictures don't always come out very well, and they're difficult to change without decent tools. This software is seriously capable of dealing with such intransigence, and you don't have to guess what color would look better for Aunt Prudence's pasty face. PhotoShop Elements will, at your behest, automatically create several color-adjusted versions of your image. Prudence might not look right with a Cayman Islands tan, but she might look better with a little glow in her cheeks. And what about that blemish on your neck? Mmm-mm, it's no good letting the spouse speculate about that... Touch the little sucker up. No pun intended.

If you're wondering about all those insidious little icons on your screen, drop down the Hints tab into its own little window and let it explain them to you as you pass your mouse over each icon. If you're wondering about how to make that text look like carved relief in marble, drop down the Recipes tab to find out how to do all sorts of wonderful things to text or pictures with step-by-step explanations. The Effects tab provides pre-designed manipulations that can be applied to either text or pictures. And, the good ol' Layer Styles tab has all those cool bevels, glows and inner or outer drop shadows. I love Layer Styles.

The best thing about PhotoShop Elements is its price...you can get a program that will let a web designer do all the things he's always wanted to do with his text and pictures - because that's how he saw them done on the really good web sites.

And we know a good web site when we see one, don't we.

Can anyone tell me if this software implements the use of layers and masks like its photoshop parent or is it much simpler like photo essentials?

I will never buy another Adobe Product. This program has a very steep learning curve. Once I got the hang of it I found that every time I want to use it I have to reinstall it, and it won't work if I don't let it call home for permission. This wastes a lot of time. Much as I hate to do so, I will go back to Microsoft.