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Photoshop Elements: Good Buy?
- Thread starter Lord Blackadder
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I tend to disagree here. PSE does everything that any picture taker would want it to do with more features along the way. PSE coupled with say that free trial of photomatix you use makes for an amazing combo if HDR is what you want. I think PSE when bundled with cheap old school photo printers was not a capable application, times have changed.
I think this is based on the fact that he is speaking from an experienced near-professional photographer's point of view. At least the images I've seen from him appear to be coming from someone who is skilled in many areas of photography and he may need the advanced tools in PS. Having only needed levels, curves, perhaps slight color correction as the basics myself...that and the fact that I'm more of a picture taker than anything, I can't really say how that statement is qualified.
Oh see there. V 1 & 2 are versions that used to come with printers...for free. Clearly you will be using a product that is as limited as the Canon print suite with optional plugins to make your photos into comic strips!
I really do not think you will be unhappy. Based on what you've already identified as your needs with what are some real basic needs of photographers today, I think PSE is a great idea and may even suit your needs even after you can afford PS.
Biggest issue I had with Elements 4 on the mac was lack of 16 bit image support. This may have been fixed on later editions.
Depending on your budget, you might take a look at, or trial Lightzone. It's a really good editor with zone system/film development tendencies. It's 20% off through the end of the year.
http://www.lightcrafts.com/
Basic will run about $120 and the full version ~$200 with the rebate.
Also, Bibble Light is $79 and Bibble Pro $129
http://www.bibblelabs.com/
If you shoot a lot with ultra-wides, Bibble's distortion correction rules. If you get Pro, you can run it on OSX, Windows or Linux.
You can trial them both and see what you think. They won't help with the PS tutorial issues, but they're both great pieces of software. I have CS3 and Capture NX and Bibble. If Lightzone had been ready in time, I'd probably have a copy of that too.
*Cough* "might have changed?" *cough* You'd generally expect someone who wants people to read & respect their opinions to at least be aware of the subjects they're opining on. It's been five years since Elements 2.0 was released, even with the Mac version trailing by two, you're looking at three major releases of differences and spouting an opinion on an outdated 1.0 release that's six and a half years old is a significant disservice to the original poster.
It also makes me seriously question the validity of any opinion or review you'd post. Even version 1.0 of Elements wasn't all that bad- especially if you compare it to Photoshop LE! Ron Galbraith's review at the time[1] had the following "What's missing" list between the full Photoshop 6 and Elements 1.0[2]:
Actions
Curves
Selective Color
The ability to view or apply corrections to individual channels.
16-bit file support.
Lab or CMYK support
I'm curious about what PS wizardry you were trying to do with your P&S "Free copy of Photoshop Elements" camera's files that was so feature-limited.
Paul
[1] http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-3911-3920
[2] That doesn't include what's different, just what doesn't exist in Elements 1.0 that did in PS6
Stop me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the "Merge to HDR" feature is only available in Photoshop...not a big deal for me, since I can get Photomatix.
I am fairly certain you are correct on that assumption. Not having used HDR in PS (I'm still using CS) I would say that Photomatix might have the market here. It seems to be the application tossed out most often in forums but having never used HDR in PS I can't honestly say which is better. Either way PSE doesn't have it so far as I understand.
That's true, but PS's merge to HDR isn't great. If you can do masks and feather in PSE, you can get better results with a lot more work such as this workflow:
http://www.harzergruben.de/DRI/dri.htm
Otherwise, you can just get Photomatix, which does better than either.
I think that's what I meant by "Some CYMK stuff."
*ducks as designers throw random and heavy things at him*
I've used Photoshop for 15 years, now up to CS2 (Photoshop 9?). I also have Elements 4. In all honesty, Elements does everything I need, for a hell of a lot less money. PSE 4 is slightly broken in Leopard but still works well enough. I'll upgrade when the new version comes out.