|
| 
 enlarge | From: Adobe Systems Inc.
Category: Software
List Price: £78.02
Buy New: £58.00
You Save: £20.02 (26%)
New (9) Used (4) from £24.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 4
Format: Cd-rom
Platforms: Windows Xp, Windows Vista
Media: CD-ROM
Operating System: Windows XP
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 7.9 x 2.1
MPN: 29230709
EAN: 5051254220022
ASIN: B000VZEIOS
Release Date: October 2, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
|
| Customer Reviews:
 A great version of photoshop! January 9, 2008
31 out of 34 found this review helpful
I have used photoshop for the past 5 years at work - although only for lightweight photo manipulation. Everything that I used to do, I can still to on this version.
I'm no graphic designer, and so I really wanted to make sure this version had the following, which is all I really did anyway:
1) Still has the select tool, and the ability to use layers
2) Still has the adjust - which has more user-friendly settings
3) Can still change image size, and "quality" of jpeg
Also, you can download a 30 day trial at the adobe site - which is useful too! On the whole, a relief to be able to do what I wanted to do, at around 10% of the price!
 Good but maybe not worth upgrading........ December 8, 2007
15 out of 24 found this review helpful
Worth it if you don't have PE3 or later.
The best software of its type.
Works on Vista 64 bit.
Ideal digital photo tool November 18, 2007
134 out of 136 found this review helpful
I had the full version of Photoshop loaded on my last PC and it was thoroughly wasted on me. The majority of the features were unnecessary for photo adjustments and it took ages to open and close the program. I also did not like having a separate program running as a file browser. This made it slower and more cumbersome still.
In contrast, this fairly basic program is easy to use and apart from the shortage of ready-made picture frames, it enables you to transform photographs in all the ways I could think of. I have used the `guided' adjustments to very good effect. I invariably need to the alter the brightness of my photos and it's possible to apply this to the darker parts of the image only without ruining overall clarity. In the past, I've selected a darkish area of the picture manually and the transformation results have been fairly mediocre in comparison.
The worst aspect of the program is the fact that it does not recognise the old folders you've probably placed your files in. Instead, it puts all photos into one massive folder and then you need to apply tags to individual photos or make up whole new sets of folders. Rather than mess around with this, I've tended to sort all my pictures into date order and leave them in the folders I started with.
Thoroughly recommended. Its only rival for the money is Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2, which is similarly good value for money; more labour-intensive, but easier to browse around.
 Oh dear, contains bugs November 13, 2007
112 out of 123 found this review helpful
I gave a very positive review of Photoshop Elements 5 on Amazon, and when saw that a new version was out I excitedly bought it straight away, even though I was perfectly happy using version 5. I really wish that I hadn't bothered.
First of all, version 6 makes few major functional leaps from version 5. There are new features to improve composite group photos that allow you to cut and paste a person from one picture into another. This was possible with 5, but it may be a tad easier to do it with this. There are new art / filter effects too, and the blemish remover has apparently been improved. I see these more as 'add ons' or updates rather than major programme revisions. The new feature of merging faces has only novelty value, and is not particularly good. However, there is one new feature well worth having, and that's the ability to stick landscape photos together into one big panorama. This works remarkably well, although you might have trouble getting the resulting pictures printed unless you are prepared to spend mucho casho at the developers!
The organizer window is more or less the same as in version 5, except that the background colour is darker and there are more on-screen options for editing without leaving the organizer window. This is a small improvement and not that significant to users accustomed to version 5. The quick fix and full edit screens are largely unchanged.
The improvements are nowhere near as outstanding as the problems in version 6. I was dismayed to find that version 6 did not recognise all of the tags that I had painstakingly created to organise my pictures in version 5. Some tags were imported into version 6, but not all of them, and the ones that WERE imported were not necessarily connected to all the pictures they were originally attached to! What is the point of coming up with an excellect file organizing system like this if you're not going to use the feature with backward compatibility and consistency with your own software, eh Adobe?
Another minor gripe is that the mouse wheel no longer works as a zoom control tool when you're in 'hand' mode. You have to move the mouse pointer to a different part of the screen and use a dedicated zoom slider control, which is more fiddly than the original.
Worst of all, version 6 is bugged. There is an option to get Photoshop to whizz through all your pictures and find people's faces, which you then tag with the person's name. This is a fantastically useful tool for finding pictures of people, and was present in version 5, except that it WORKED in that version. The 'improvement' incorporated into version 6 is to have the programme crash when you attempt to tag the pictures before the programme has finished searching. It does seem to work if you wait for it to finish, but if that's the case why does the programme allow you to try to tag them while it's still searching? Answer - it's obviously a bug. A more serious bug involves the photo-grabbing software, which failed to work at all after installing version 6. Not only that, the computer would not recognise my card-reader or even my iPod until I'd completely uninstalled both version 6 AND version 5, did a registry scan and repair, and restarted the computer. Very, very poor show - unforgivable, even.
There is one improvement I've found. In version 5 I could never get the 'find similar pictures' feature to work. Now it does. Out with the old bugs, in with the new!
So there it is. I will update this review if I find any more problems or solutions.
The lowdown is, if you don't have a photo editor, this is still good. The features that do work, work very well. Read my review for version 5 for details of what this programme does - it's essentially the same as version 5. Which is why, if you are already a Photoshop 5 user, I'd advise you to keep your money in your pocket, and safe yourself a LOT of hassle.
Probably the best . . . and now better still October 19, 2007
191 out of 195 found this review helpful
If you're serious about digital photography and want to do more than just the basic photo-editing provided with your camera then this is the program for you. Its big brother, Adobe Photoshop, sets the standard for image manipulation, but I am sure that the vast majority of users will be more than satisfied with Photoshop Elements, providing as it does additional functions and a more friendly interface for the digital photographer. The program is so easy to use that most users will be lulled into just using the standard fixes rather than exploring the huge number of additional tools for serious image manipulation. However, it is good to know that they are there should you have the time and inclination to explore them, and its well worth while getting hold of one of the many illustrated Elements books to help you with these.
Although it is a hugely capable program, Elements 6 also makes life easy for the beginner with its many quick fix functions and its guided edit process (new in this version). In addition, it really does have one of the best photo-organising album functions, enabling you to manage and organise thousands of photographs by a system of tags and albums, plus some very advanced photo search options - the new "find faces" feature is quite incredible and allows you for example to search through a set of holiday photographs and find all those which feature the faces of your family and friends.
The program picks up photos from any digital camera without fuss and red eye removal can be set to work automatically before you even see your photo. Adobes best shot smart fix edit is only a click away from the main screen and will greatly improve any photograph.
In addition to those features I've mentioned above, this version also has added much improved selection tools, improved processing of RAW files (typically for those with SLR cameras), a useful clone overlay which lets you clone (copy) individual items in a photograph, better black and white conversion and many others. It also has a VISTA style look and feel, while still working fine with Windows XP.
As to whether its worth upgrading from earlier versions, well, the price is quite high for the number of new features, but it comes down to whether you want the latest version "because its there" or because you need it. I suspect the "need" factor is fairly low, but the programme certainly looks a lot better and is definitely a significant update. It all depends of how much you value having the latest version of your software against having the familiarity of the version you're used to.
|
|
|
| |
