Adobe Photoshop Elements 8
November 5, 2009 | Posted by admin 
- Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 combines power and simplicity so you can easily go beyond the basics to tell great stories with your photos
- Make your photos look extraordinary with easy-to-use editing options–whiten teeth, recompose photos, remove unwanted elements and more
- Share your stories in beautiful, personalized print creations and web experiences, and share on popular devices
- Easily manage and protect all your photos and video clips from one convenient place
- Enjoy automatic online backup with 2GB of free storage, and access your photos and videos anywhere you are
Product Description
The Adobe Photoshop Elements 8.0 Software for Windows s an intuitive, yet powerful, consumer image editing application for Windows. The software is designed in a way that anyone can use it, bringing the legendary power of Photoshop into the hands of even the most casual photographer.The software features tools that let you organize images into albums, retouch photos, create digital photo albums and share your photos with friends and family. A membership to the Photo… More >>
Categories: Graphics Software | 
Tags: Adobe, Elements, Photoshop | 
5 Comments »
Get ready to pay extra for all the good stuff. Wish I knew would not have bought it.
Rating: 1 / 5
This is a fantastic photo editor and organization solution. I’m not sure why there are so many bad reviews. I had no problems at all. If there was one thing I would change, it would be to have two different launchers. One for the standard splash screen to select edit or organize and one launcher for the editor only. You can get around this by right-clicking on a photo file and select ‘Open with’ (Vista) and choosing the Photoshop editor. This will take you directly to the editor with the photo loaded and ready to go. This is the first “Elements” product I have owned, although I have used an older version of the regular Photoshop product. This is every bit as good for photo editing and much better in many ways. Overall I would highly recommend it to my friends.
Rating: 5 / 5
Gererally I love Photoshop Elements; have owned every version for several years, but PE 8 has some problems. I upgraded from PE 7; tried to make a slide show: no image–slides ran, heard sound track but blank screen even after updating my video driver (Nvidia 8500 GT). Also, PE 8 does not integrate with Primiere Elements 7, only with Primiere Elements 8. Further, PE 8 seems a bit slower than PE 7. Eventually, I removed PE 8 and re-installed PE 7. My computer is a quad-core with 6 GB of memory, Vista 64 bit OS. Seems like Adobe screwed up more things than they added with the new program. Not much new but if you’ve missed the last few iterations, you should like PE 8 provided you can get the slide show module working. (Originally I inadvertantly posted this review under the MAC version of PE 8, oops.)
Rating: 3 / 5
So, I download and install the 30 day trial version of Elements 8, and decide that the improvement over version 6 is just not worth it. I uninstall version 8 and what happens next defies me. Version 8 gets wiped, but so does my version 6 and my version 4 (and Adobe PDF Reader and Flash player). With some stoicism I set about reinstalling Elements and lo and behold, my Version of Elements 4 won’t install on Vista, which means that I can’t install my upgrade to version 6. 36 hours later all is okay, but this required a support call to Adobe and the download of a new version 4. Why do I mention all of this? Well Windows 7 was released a few days ago and many of you will be looking to do clean installs – beware!!! Imagine forking out money for version 8 upgrade and then having to install each version in turn (as Adobe would have you do) to get to the latest version.
On to Elements 8 itself. As an upgrade, and if you’re moving from version 6 or 7, this software simply isn’t worth it. The couple of bells and whistles which Adobe have bolted on are not that good, and if you can look beyond the two minute gee whizz period (and two minutes is all the gee whizz factor there is – believe me), then version 8 is very much the same as version 7 and version 6. Even assuming you avoid the hassle I went through, trust me there simply isn’t anything at all worth spending a few dollars on to upgrade for, never mind the exhorbitant pricing demanded by Adobe.
If you’re new to photo editing, or looking to make the switch, then Elements 8 is an excellent editor. I have recently completed 30 day trials of PhotoImpact and PaintShop Pro, and in my view Elements stands head and shoulders above them. If you want to do a quick fix, then Elements does it superbly well, if you want to do some very powerful editing then Elements will get you there too. The only caveat I would offer is that you should budget $30 or so on an accompanying book to allow you to get inside the program.
I do have a grumble with Elements, a significant one. I cannot stand the Organizer – why on earth they can’t make it work like windows explorer I’ll never know. Move a file from one location to another and can Organizer work that out? No way. Honestly, it offers such a twisted and convoluted way to work with files that it should be consigned to the trash can of history. That said, Elements is still a great editor, just don’t try to do anything other than edit photo files with it. For me I use ACDSee 3 Pro as a photo manger and edit with Elements. From ACDSee I can switch to Elements instantaneously and I now have a very powerful combination of superb photo manager and very good editor. By the way for those looking for a competent editor check out ACDSee 3 Pro, the tools for controlling lighting and color are the best in the business – in fact for some it may be all you need for all your photos.
Two stars for Elements 8. As an upgrade it’s shockingly poor, and Adobe’s upgrade policies need to be revisited, but as an editor Elements remains very good.
Rating: 2 / 5
Firstly, if you don’t already own Photoshop Elements and have any desire to quickly and effectively enhance or modify a digital image then go push “But it Now” and I’ll wait for you to get back.
However, if you already own the previous version then the question is if it’s worth the cost for the additional features. The answer lies in how you handle your workflow. There are certainly a lot of “improved” features but the big deal in this version is the organizer. That’s not an issue if you typically shoot some pictures, pick out the ones you want to print or send to a web page, and then move on with your life. However, if you maintain a library of 10,000 images and need to find specific shots based on a number of criteria like subject, date shot, location, your rating, lens used, etc, then you need some kind of organizational capability. (The pros and other people wanting to sound important call this Digital Asset Management or DAM.) That’s what’s been significantly enhanced in PSE8.
A great suggestion (someone who I now respect called that) is to go to the Adobe site and download the fully functional 30-day trial of this (or the entire creative suite) and see if it meets (or exceeds) your needs.
FWIW, I prefer to use Acd Systems ACDSee Pro Photo Manager 2.5 – Windows for DAM (I want to sound important) and use PSE for when I have to move bits around.
Rating: 3 / 5