Home > Consumer Reviews > Adobe Photoshop Elements & Premiere Elements 7 [OLD VERSION]

I have the Adobe Photoshop Elements & Premiere Elements 7 duo installed on my VISTA powered laptop and have worked with them several days. I started using Adobe Photoshop Elements version 3 a number of years ago and thought it was good, but somewhat complicated to use with a long learning curve involved. The new Elements version 7 retains most of the original features and complexity but is upgraded and the tools are more sophisticated in how they are applied and the results they produce.

Some reviewers of Adobe Photoshop Elements have upgraded from version 6 and complain that there is little new in the latest edition. That may be true, but there is a noticeable difference between version 3 and this most recent rendition. One of the most obvious features to appear in version 7 is the addition of on-line storage, photo sharing and available tutorials.

There is an extra charge for Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 "Plus" which provides additional on-line storage space. This is not to imply that Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 "basic" is one of those come-on condensed programs that get bundled in new computers. Photoshop Elements 7 out of the box is a full blown photo editing program and stays that way without any additional charge unless that additional on-line storage is desired. The downside to this option to invest in the "Plus" feature is how the program startup screen nags to join every time the program is opened. So far I haven't found a way to say no thanks--don't bother me with this again.

The Adobe Photoshop Elements programs are consistently rated number one in digital photo editing reviews and that is probably deserved. I recently purchased, installed and started to use the Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 Ultimate program for editing my photos. This program is often rated number two by reviewers, but it is cheaper than the Adobe software. I like the Corel program a lot, but the Adobe program is equally good and maybe just a bit better in some ways--fancier and more colorful screens for one thing. However, for the advanced amateur digital photographer like me the difference is a matter of which program is easier to use. I think that may be a matter of personal choice in this case.

Now for the Adobe PREMIER Elements 7: This is the program one needs in order to download, construct, edit and produce video/slide show projects. It is the DVD (and Blu-ray) maker lots of editing programs lack. I have previously used a Roxio video making program and found it buggy and without all of the flexibility I wanted. The Adobe Premier Elements 7 program has more options and creative features. It is certainly easier to use than the Roxio software.

As with all of the DVD maker programs, one must have the right computing capacity and the proper DVD burning drive. Older wimpy computers will probably have trouble with Premier Elements 7 and apparently crashes are not uncommon if there isn't enough RAM available. I have the software loaded into a VISTA laptop and not had any problems of note. Saving a project as one goes along is a good thing to do just in case.

This software is primarily and obviously well designed for making movie type videos. However, I have used my Adobe Premier Elements 7 program mostly for creating slide shows from my collections of digital photos and it does a great job. It allows me to organize my pictures add transitions between them in a slide show, put background music in and insert titles too. I like the ability to arrange things in DVD chapters and menus and my finished slide shows surprise me in how professional they look.

So far, I have not had any problem with creating DVD shows that work in my disk players connected to ordinary television sets.

I can recommend both Adobe Premier Elements 7 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 7. The digital photographer just beginning to edit photos and videos will find these programs useful as will the more advanced picture makers.

The primary reason for this release is Adobe launching its new Photoshop website, which is Adobe's attempt to compete with social networking and video/image sharing sites like MySpace, YouTube, and Photobucket. Photoshop Elements 7 allows you to directly share/backup your images on that site.. or, at least, you're supposed to be able to. Every time I uploaded my photos, I got a message that the images were damaged/corrupted and could not be displayed. Fixes for this problem will probably be added quickly (they may already be up by the time you read this review), but it just goes to show that PE7 was released with significant bugs.

Beyond the online aspects, there's not much new in PE7. Most of the new features in Photoshop Elements are things most users were already doing with layers and/or the airbrush tool. Premiere Elements 7 has some new/improved wizards to help you make slide shows and movies, but other video editors have had those features for a while. Premiere Elements also has some of the more common plugins as part of the main PE program now (SmartSound, etc...), but users of previous PE versions already had access to those things. Finally, Premiere Elements is now listed as having AVCHD support, but - since I don't currently use AVCHD - I haven't personally tested this aspect of the software.

The Photoshop Elements 5/Premiere Elements 3 bundle, released back in 2006, was probably the most streamlined Elements version with a full set of features - and Adobe even put out a patch for it to fix what few bugs there were. Since then, the Elements software has gotten more invasive and more bloated every year. Aspects of PE7 constantly run on your system when you boot up, and altering your config files or startup to stop them will require you to re-install PE. Both programs in PE7 also require significant system resources to run properly, yet neither has significantly improved since 2006. Yes, there have been some new features in both since then, but the increased number of bugs in each version, the increased invasiveness, and the lack of post-release patches make the few new features not worth the upgrade.

I can't recommend buying this software. Those with previous versions of PE are better off sticking with them. New users are better off doing some research and buying an older version or a different piece of software entirely. It is a shame that the Elements line has degenerated like this.

I have a relatively quick PC (Quad-Core, 4GB RAM, 1GB Video, etc..) and this software not only takes forever to load, navigation within the application is choppy and SLOW. Granted, I have a lot of files, but other organization apps work fine. It crashed twice while cataloging my library.

I was also not very pleased that the software installs two services that run on your PC all the time. This software (and any others that install resident apps) should be forced to put a big warning label on them that says "WILL NEGATIVELY IMPACT OVERALL PERFORMACE OF YOUR COMPUTER!".

Uninstalling and returning to alternatives.

I bought this package thinking that the Photoshop Elements would have had more options from the PE5. I found that I like the PE5 better. It seems like they are moving toward the photoshop.com way. I can no longer find where I can create a Photo Gallery that I can create to my desktop and then upload to my "own" website. Also uploading to the photoshop.com online hasn't worked all that well for me so far. The images are up on their site but you cannot see them??? Also I used to be able to create a flash website using the Gallery feature. Why take it out or at least hide it so I can't find it?

As far as the Premiere Elements go I do like the added features here. But be warned, I thought this whole save to the photoshop.com thing would have included the video end as well. But it doesn't. You can backup your video files to the web but not present them like the Photoshop photos. I do like the added music option in Premiere. I always wondered why this was left out for so long. The green screen options are also really cool.

Maybe I need to upgrade to the pay account to get my photos to work properly?

Let me say at the outset that I use Adobe Photoshop Elements as my main photo editor. It is the best low cost tool available for cleaning up photos, stitching together multiple scans of a large original, repairing damaged shots and so on. I am doing family history, with over 9,000 shots and scans so far. Some of the scans are of negatives from the 1800's and need a lot of work, which is easy and fast in Photoshop. So don't take this mostly negative review as a reason not to buy Photoshop at all - I know of no other product that does the job as well.

That said, my recent experience in upgrading to version 7.0 is all the more appalling. The tool I rely on is drifting more and more towards uselessness and commercialism. If I could afford Creative Studio 4 it would not be a concern. As an advanced amateur user it is hard to even justify the yearly pound of flesh for updates, let alone the $1000s for a pro tool. But the update would have been OK if it were truly an update, not an attempt to gouge even more $ out of me for online services.

Specifics -

Organizer. The Organizer is a bloated, slow, klunky way to organize your photos. It is well that Google makes a much better free one. However, I did try to use it in 6.0 and tagged 100s of photos. 7.0 cannot read the catalogs I made in 6.0 so all that work is lost. That is not the worst "feature" of the new Organizer however - it constantly blares ads at you to sign up for the useless online features. You can turn off the popup messages (Why should I PAY for software that gives me popups?????) but there is still a signup offer in the main page. The startup splash screen is also stuffed with ads.

Photoshop. No real new features. The new "features" are just old add-ins and shortcuts for things you could already do. Frankly I don't need a lot of new features, I am still learning how to use the very extensive existing set. But for the high upgrade price you expect SOMETHING.

Premiere. I didn't find any new features except the integration with the subscription program.

My suggestion - if you have 4.0, 5.0 or 6.0 skip the upgrade. Next year they'll do it again. Maybe this time they will listen to users and make it a real upgrade, or issue a bug fix instead.