Adobe Photoshop Elements 6

Publisher's description of Adobe Photoshop Elements

Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 software combines power and simplicity so you can easily tell great stories with your photos. Make your photos look their best whatever your level of editing experience--a friendly new design and step-by-step editing assistance help get you started. Easily perform more advanced retouching and enhancing thanks to easy image-selection tools, amazing composing capabilities. Share your stories in imaginative photo books, scrapbook pages, slide shows, and interactive web galleries. And always find and view all your photos and video clips with ease.

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Editor's review of Adobe Photoshop Elements

With an impressive collection of flexible tools, Adobe Photoshop Elements is one of the most powerful consumer-level photo editors around. Batch processing, image layering, cloning, and Web optimization are just a few of the software's time-saving tools.

It's taken a while for Elements to crawl out from the shadow of its celebrity sibling, Photoshop, but these days you'd be hard-pressed to find similarities between the two. There's the occasional familiar dialog box and a handful of traditional Photoshop interface quirks that may elude newbies, but if Photoshop CS is the "pro" version, Elements is for the average consumer.

Overall, there seems to be more and better creative content in Elements 5, and it's generally easier to use than its predecessor. The organizer and photo downloader have buckets of new features, including useful tweaks to stacking, map integration, and more. However, the imaging tools aren't keeping pace. The new additions--black-and-white conversion, curve-based correction, distortion correction, and a different take on sharpening--offer little more than new interfaces for old problems.

The tutorials and help tools do a great job of demystifying the labyrinthine interface, but if you're looking for a basic tool for common graphic tasks, there are plenty of lower-priced options that are much easier to master. Photoshop Elements is definitely worth a look, though, if you're looking for a significant boost in creativity and productivity.

User reviews of Adobe Photoshop Elements

• Average user rating: out of 78 votes
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  Adobe Photoshop Elements

  much easier & looks better..

  by: sheba94601 on 17-Nov-2007 09:03:16 PM

  Pros: ...then Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended, to a newbie like me. And it does'nt freeze up like CS3 or put a lot of unwanted adobe stuff on your pc. Nice & sleek

  Cons: nothing! it's all good

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  Adobe Photoshop Elements

  Great Update, but...

  by: MrKhaki on 29-Dec-2007 10:48:23 PM

  Pros: The new interface is slick, the extra toolbar elements are a great edition.

  The price is great for a quite full featured consumer photo editor. I use Photoshop CS2 at work and Elements 6 is for home... it's a lot easier to use and simplifies a number of tasks. I'm starting to wonder why I need CS2... OK, I just may not upgrade to CS3 for a while now.

  Purchase onOne Essentials for Elements to have a complete digital photo editing studio.

  Cons: Slow to load. Organizer is extremely slow for photo browing and importing photos. Organizer not integrated very well with Elements.

  Layers: why isn't there a Folder option?? You can't use other Photoshop files (CSx) that have layers... OK, you can, but you can't expand the folders to edit layers. Why is such an important organizational tool left out of Elements?

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  Adobe Photoshop Elements

  Especially like the ability to see the big screen in the filter gallery.

  by: azhotaz on 03-Nov-2007 07:57:26 PM

  Pros: I have the old 2.0 version so I don't know what happened before the 6.0 came out. It has three things that surpass Paint Shop Pro Poto X2 -- both still have some issues that have decided me to wait on making my purchase. So this really is comparing these two software packages.

  Elements 6 makes it easy to add stylized text; the photo collage is great for quick 'scrapbook' type prints to hand out. I love the filter gallery that lets you see close up what effect a particular filter will have on your photo -- those small thumb nail shots just don't cut it -- they have never worked for me and still don't in PSP. Also what PSP doesn't have is Elements 6 'diffuse' light filter. It is a great effect on photos.

  Elements 6 is still taking some getting used to -- it looks a lot different (layers) than 2.0, but it looks a lot more like their high-priced Photoshop CS3 -- and actually I like it better than CS3.

  Using both of these at the same time works great.

  The other thing about Elements 6 is you think you can make a photobook and print it, or you think you can make a calendar and print it -- but no

  Cons: Elements doesn't do as good a job on 'quick fix' defaults as does PSP. Also the PSP has a "clarify" feature which does a fantastic job -- you don't have to mess with all the other adjustments -- this one takes care of a lot of other steps. The skin smoother (PSP) is great to get rid of not just wrinkles but it clarifies -- gets rid of artifacts created by shadows, or reflections.

  PSP allows you to change the graphite background -- which apparently some people don't like but don't realize they can change. But PSP's 'perspective correction' feature is tremendous!!! It is so easy and so many times I look like I had a few too many when I took the shot. This fixes it usually in one or two tries.

  I still like the way Elements handles the layers -- it keeps them separate while apparently PSP doesn't -- I tend to get lost in the layers or lose them in PSP.

  PSP has a 'salt & pepper' filter in the 'noise' category. It takes care of some 'noise' that you can't get rid of otherwise without losing clarity.

  I don't like all these 'organizational' features of both software products. I don't want to have to load my pictures in the software's 'gallery' -- I know where it is and that's where I want my picture to stay. I don't need to have to put it in the gallery to work on it. Who ever thought that was 'convenient'?

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  Adobe Photoshop Elements

  Nice looking and a bit slicker, but at what cost?

  by: james309 on 12-Nov-2007 06:20:30 PM

  Pros: I like that the software is a bit more responsive than it's predecessor. The previous version seemed a bit clunky and not as responsive.... I also like the revamped studio, sudo pro "black" interface. This version is a step-up from previous versions and it responds more like it's big brother, on a diet. The help & support is great!

  Cons: I don't like the lack of usable templates that can make it more user ready for the semi-pro or amateur than wants to look sharp without spending a fortune.

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  Adobe Photoshop Elements

  what review?

  by: skippyah on 22-Dec-2007 06:17:00 PM

  Pros: i can make myself a backyardigan! :D

  Cons: um..it can be complicated. but i can live with it :)

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