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

I've been a little out of touch when it comes to Adobe products for the last few of years. Until about six months ago, Photoshop LE has been meeting my needs. Six months ago I replace my desktop with a Power Mac G4 (QS933) and in doing so, changed OS' to OSX pretty much exclusively. Four the last few months, when working with photos I've been running Photoshop LE in classic mode, and it had continue to work well. A couple of weeks ago (when Jaguar-10.2 came out) I decided to abandon classic all together and started shopping around for a new photo editing app and discovered Photoshop Elements 2.0. I've never used version 1.0 so I can't compare the two, but without question, Elements 2.0 is a huge improvement over LE. One of the biggest things I didn't like about LE was the lack of ability to go back and undo changes that I made to my images. While I really could not consider this a short coming to LE (the full version of Photoshop didn't have that ability back then), I always thought it would be useful as I was always making changes and applying filters that could not be undone (after the next change was made). I would end up playing around with a picture so much, it became almost useless, and then I'd start again from scratch until I found what I wanted. God bless Adobe for adding the history pallet with Elements. Now I can play around all I want, and if I don't like the results, I can go into the history pallet and delete any of the changes I made to the image. Unfortunately, once the image is saved, it does not save the history, but it's still a huge improvement over only being able to undo the last change. I simply can't tell you how valuable that feature is to me.

The interface and tool bars are also much improved. While I always felt that LE was simple to use for basic editing, many of the more advanced filters and layers could be somewhat difficult for the novice to figure out. Elements 2.0 has made these advanced features much more usable with the excellent tutorial and Recipes feature. With the Recipe feature users are walked through features that would have been daunting even to intermediate users.

Stability and responsiveness has been been very good on my machine. Thus far, Elements 2.0 seems almost as stable as OSX itself (in the year and a half I've been using OSX it (the OS) has NEVER crashed-hard to believe, but true). Elements does take longer to launch then LE, but with all the extra features, that's to be expected. I have been having some problems importing images from my digital camera, but I don't know if that's Adobe's fault, or Olympus', and is the only reason I give it four instead of five stars.

Over all, Photoshop Elements 2.0 is an outstanding product. Not only does it have far more features then Photoshop LE, Adobe almost makes these features more accessible and easier to use. And, last and more importantly, it runs great in OSX.

After using many different programs....PictureIt, PhotoExpress, Photo Print Gold, and even Photo Soap...I love Elements! I've used the full version of Photoshop at my work and yet this version has everything I need for working with my digital photos. If you are a professional photographer or graphic artist or something, you'll need the real thing, but for anyone just taking home photos and wanting to clean-up and print photos, this is an amazingly powerful program.

Also, I really appreciate the fact that Adobe will let you download a preview version on their website so you can test it out first. It shows that they have faith you will like it and turn around and buy it.

In the end, this one has all of the features I want/need in a photo editing program and it is worth the price. The only other suggestion I would give is that if you plan to work with digital photos, you should take a short class on how to use the features. I used Photoshop LE for a couple years and didn't realize all the features in there that could have really helped me! I got Elements and took a class for just a couple hours and the difference in my photos is amazing!

Photoshop Elements is the best choice for beginning, intermediate and some advanced use in photo-editing for home and in some cases for business. The program is a great solution for any home user working with digital images and printing to an inkjet (CRT or LED light process printers as well!). More advanced users, who may use Photoshop at work, can use Elements at home as a less expensive alternative and still have the Photoshop look and feel. You can't beat the price, or the Adobe reputation.

The usual objection for most users is that Elements doesn't have some of the more powerful features in Photoshop, like Curves, channels, CMYK, vector editing and controls, but with one book (see The Hidden Power of Photoshop Elements 2; hiddenelements.com) these functions and more can be added, giving Elements much of the power thought only to be in Photoshop!

This is an ideal product -- simple to use if you just want to do the basics, but with an enormous range of capabilities, the most important of which are easily accessible from toolbars. Amazon's editorial review describes Photoshop Elements as being a "barer bones" version of Photoshop 7.0, the $600 program used by professionals. It's true that there are a few advanced features in Photshop that didn't make into Elements, but for the vast majority of amateurs, Elements has everything you need. It's far superior to the "lite" versions of software that are often bundled with digital cameras in both its interface and its features. (And if you want what Adobe left out, buy "The Hidden Power of Photoshop Elements 2", available from Amazon.) Furthermore, it accepts many of the add-on tools ("plug-ins") that work in Photoshop 7.0 so you can expand its functionality. The manual is OK and the help screens are good, and there are several good books you can buy to teach you the subtleties of digital image editing and of Elements. There's everything here to satisfy the beginner and the experienced amateur as well. Five stars for ease of use, features, expandability and value.

The Best. I have used 5 different Image editors that most people get with cameras and scanners. None compare. Fill Flash can save a picture that the others can't help. Worth the learning curve.
Recent Amazon prices after rebates make Elements hard to resist.
The training CD currently available for free is well done (it only covers a few subjects). Those that can just try every feature and learn that way will not be let down. Hint books are helpful with combining features to accomplish specific goals. Adobe has some good free tutorials online.