7.0/ englisch/ Vollversion/ Box/ WIN

A great photo editing package for home users, 06 Sep 2008
Presently on PcPro's `A-List', Adobe Elements is a cut down version of Adobe's £500+ Photoshop/Photoshop Extended CS4, and costs considerably less while still having a lot of useful photo editing capabilities. Photoshop CS4 has a steep learning curve, but Photoshop elements is far more home-user friendly. A lot of the program is geared towards image storage and management of the photos on your hard drive, helping with emailing, web output and scrapbooks of your images. The program can auto-downloads your images from the camera to folders, set up using the date, and can even process the images, say automatically removing red-eye, while it does it. Using stacks you can set up image databases [smart albums] using keywords like names, places, events, etc.., and you can even search using visual tags within the image. That said, I shun the image database options offered by Photoshop Elements and Extended, preferring the simplicity of logical folder names instead. Also, like PhotoShop, the image database side isn't seamlessly integrated into the image editing side [to the point where it's actually annoying].

New to Elements 7 is a new Quick Fix tool to soften surfaces while keeping the edge and detail sharp - i.e. a blur tool, which can help to remove unwanted image noise. Plus there's a new Scene Cleaner tool that can brush away undesirable objects from a photo [so you can ditch that car or tourists from the view] and there's now a Smart Brush which lets you instantly apply effects to a selected area of the image. Plus Element's 7 sports a new single step `whiten teeth', 'make grass greener' and `make the sky blue' tool - but this is little more than streamlining tools within Quick Select and Adjustment Layer Presets that were available on Elements 6. Besides Adobe's suggestion of using the tool to whiten teeth and add a suntan to say Aunt Doris's face may make her look a little ridiculous. Also new in Element's 7 will be a free subscription to Photoshop.com, a special service Adobe has devised to bring friends together by providing quick access to on-line backup, storage, and sharing capabilities. You get 2GB of on-line storage, `enough for up to 1,500 photos', so you can view your photos from virtually anywhere. Thus Photoshop Elements goes `Facebook', allowing you to share your photos `in fun, interactive ways via invitation-only'. For these `Online Albums' you will get new [quite fun] animated templates delivered to Elements on a regular basis. There will also be a Photoshop.com ` Plus' membership offering 20 Gb [15,000 photos] of on-line photo storage, but that will require you paying an annual fee. The first year's 20 Gb subscription is included in Adobe's `Elements 7 Plus' [but not this standard version].

And all the old Element 6's tools are there as well. For editing you have a set of 'quickfix' options or you can load the full image editor for greater manual control: such as adjust sharpness, correct camera distortion, levels, hue and skin colour. Naturally you have standard tools like crop and adjust image size (pixels) as well. Plus there are step-through guides [guided edit] to help you get there. The software will also integrate with scanners twain interfaces if you are into scanning film, and the Fill Light [shadow/highlight] tool is pretty essential for bringing out detail in shadows from any slide/negative scan. Plus Elements can handle RAW camera images, although I use TIFF/jpg (Elements can save in any common image format).

System requirements are quite high: CD drive, 1Gb system RAM, XP or Vista, 2GHz processor, and a Direct-X 9 graphics card [and Adobe installers can reject systems that don't meet the minimum spec]. Elements 7 perhaps isn't a crucial upgrade from Elements 6 or even 5, but for new home users, or those with older versions, it's very powerful photo editing and image database software from the market leaders. The new 'Scene Cleaner' tool should have been the 'killer app' for those considering upgrading, but it is little more than Elements 6's old PhotoMerge Group application and it requires a series of photos where one has the background free to copy across [and it sometimes gets the exposure wrong making the added bit look rather obvious].

Adobe Elements 7 has only two real competitors at the price: Paint Shop Pro X2 and Serif PhotoPlus X2. Both these programs are also excellent and worthy of consideration, with PhotoPlus's strength being it's about as powerful but rather cheaper to buy and upgrade. Likewise Corel Paint Shop pro X2 occasionally offers a bit more than Elements [layer masks, and curves], is also cheaper and a tad easier to use, although it can be buggy [not Adobe's strong point on first version release either - so install those patches]. Professional users and some SLR enthusiasts will still head towards Adobe's semi-automated PhotoShop Darkroom 2.0 and the fantastically expensive Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended, although even at work we have Adobe Elements on a few imaging workstations for casual users, where the high cost of PhotoShop CS4 Extended simply isn't justified. That said experienced Photoshop CS4 users will rapidly find Elements 7 lacking in a few key features they are used to.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 is also available to buy as a cheaper double pack with the new Adobe Premiere Elements 7 video editing software, which should be even better value than this upgrade. Plus this double pack qualifies for a large educational discount for non-commercial use if you, or a child in the house, are in full time education [from primary school to college]. Similar large educational discounts apply to much of Adobes software. Those buying for College/School department use will save even more.

Easily tell great stories with your photos. Powerful yet easy-to-use Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 6 software helps you make your photos look their best with step-by-step editing assistance and amazing compositing capabilities. Share your stories in imagin -

A great photo editing package for home users, 06 Sep 2008
Presently on PcPro's `A-List', Adobe Elements is a cut down version of Adobe's £500+ Photoshop/Photoshop Extended CS4, and costs considerably less while still having a lot of useful photo editing capabilities. Photoshop CS4 has a steep learning curve, but Photoshop elements is far more home-user friendly. A lot of the program is geared towards image storage and management of the photos on your hard drive, helping with emailing, web output and scrapbooks of your images. The program can auto-downloads your images from the camera to folders, set up using the date, and can even process the images, say automatically removing red-eye, while it does it. Using stacks you can set up image databases [smart albums] using keywords like names, places, events, etc.., and you can even search using visual tags within the image. That said, I shun the image database options offered by Photoshop Elements and Extended, preferring the simplicity of logical folder names instead. Also, like PhotoShop, the image database side isn't seamlessly integrated into the image editing side [to the point where it's actually annoying].

New to Elements 7 is a new Quick Fix tool to soften surfaces while keeping the edge and detail sharp - i.e. a blur tool, which can help to remove unwanted image noise. Plus there's a new Scene Cleaner tool that can brush away undesirable objects from a photo [so you can ditch that car or tourists from the view] and there's now a Smart Brush which lets you instantly apply effects to a selected area of the image. Plus Element's 7 sports a new single step `whiten teeth', 'make grass greener' and `make the sky blue' tool - but this is little more than streamlining tools within Quick Select and Adjustment Layer Presets that were available on Elements 6. Besides Adobe's suggestion of using the tool to whiten teeth and add a suntan to say Aunt Doris's face may make her look a little ridiculous. Also new in Element's 7 will be a free subscription to Photoshop.com, a special service Adobe has devised to bring friends together by providing quick access to on-line backup, storage, and sharing capabilities. You get 2GB of on-line storage, `enough for up to 1,500 photos', so you can view your photos from virtually anywhere. Thus Photoshop Elements goes `Facebook', allowing you to share your photos `in fun, interactive ways via invitation-only'. For these `Online Albums' you will get new [quite fun] animated templates delivered to Elements on a regular basis. There will also be a Photoshop.com ` Plus' membership offering 20 Gb [15,000 photos] of on-line photo storage, but that will require you paying an annual fee. The first year's 20 Gb subscription is included in Adobe's `Elements 7 Plus' [but not this standard version].

And all the old Element 6's tools are there as well. For editing you have a set of 'quickfix' options or you can load the full image editor for greater manual control: such as adjust sharpness, correct camera distortion, levels, hue and skin colour. Naturally you have standard tools like crop and adjust image size (pixels) as well. Plus there are step-through guides [guided edit] to help you get there. The software will also integrate with scanners twain interfaces if you are into scanning film, and the Fill Light [shadow/highlight] tool is pretty essential for bringing out detail in shadows from any slide/negative scan. Plus Elements can handle RAW camera images, although I use TIFF/jpg (Elements can save in any common image format).

System requirements are quite high: CD drive, 1Gb system RAM, XP or Vista, 2GHz processor, and a Direct-X 9 graphics card [and Adobe installers can reject systems that don't meet the minimum spec]. Elements 7 perhaps isn't a crucial upgrade from Elements 6 or even 5, but for new home users, or those with older versions, it's very powerful photo editing and image database software from the market leaders. The new 'Scene Cleaner' tool should have been the 'killer app' for those considering upgrading, but it is little more than Elements 6's old PhotoMerge Group application and it requires a series of photos where one has the background free to copy across [and it sometimes gets the exposure wrong making the added bit look rather obvious].

Adobe Elements 7 has only two real competitors at the price: Paint Shop Pro X2 and Serif PhotoPlus X2. Both these programs are also excellent and worthy of consideration, with PhotoPlus's strength being it's about as powerful but rather cheaper to buy and upgrade. Likewise Corel Paint Shop pro X2 occasionally offers a bit more than Elements [layer masks, and curves], is also cheaper and a tad easier to use, although it can be buggy [not Adobe's strong point on first version release either - so install those patches]. Professional users and some SLR enthusiasts will still head towards Adobe's semi-automated PhotoShop Darkroom 2.0 and the fantastically expensive Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended, although even at work we have Adobe Elements on a few imaging workstations for casual users, where the high cost of PhotoShop CS4 Extended simply isn't justified. That said experienced Photoshop CS4 users will rapidly find Elements 7 lacking in a few key features they are used to.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 is also available to buy as a cheaper double pack with the new Adobe Premiere Elements 7 video editing software, which should be even better value than this upgrade. Plus this double pack qualifies for a large educational discount for non-commercial use if you, or a child in the house, are in full time education [from primary school to college]. Similar large educational discounts apply to much of Adobes software. Those buying for College/School department use will save even more.

Hopeless with Vista, 27 Oct 2008
Unfortunately, despite this being a potentially fine piece of software it is ridiculously unstable. My latop is very powerful and was bought specifically for photo editing, yet with Vista 64 the program constantly crashes (around every 10 minutes) then requires a full refresh of thumbnails before it is useable again. This can take several times with a few thousand photographs, therefore taking hours for a single edit!
Come on Adobe, get this sorted!

A good application for the price, 16 Oct 2008
I am not very experienced with photo editing software, so bought this based on Amazon reviews, as I was looking for something I could easily use to improve my digital photos.

My first impressions are that the software is good, and relatively easy to use, but not particularly intuitive. You have to really spend a bit of time practising with this to become good at using it, it is not something you will master in five minutes. However this is relatively cheap compared to some editing software, so I cannot complain too much.

I think that as I spend more time with this programme, I will become more familiar with all it's capabilities, and from what I have seen so far, it does all of the things I need it to do, including a one touch, automatic photograph enhancer, which is very useful at times!

INFURIATING, 03 Oct 2008
This is perhaps the most infuriating software I've ever used. Having had problems with earlier editions, I checked out the available books and bought the top choice with the software. I wish I hadn't bothered. Photoshop crashes most times I use it, throws up all sorts of error messages, despite installing it no less than three times. When it does work, the editor takes about five minutes to load, and the whole package is to me totally counter-intuitive. I'm going straight back to Picasa.

Good, 06 Sep 2008
My photo editor "history" goes like this:

Elements (original - awful, slugged my PC into the ground)
PSP (very good)
PhotoImpact 12 (quite excellent)

I set out to update PhotoImpact to the latest version only to find there isn't one as Corel bought Ulead and have clearly ditched it (nutters!), leaving PSP and Elements as the two mainstream editors. So I decided to become a drone and buy Elements.

What a pleasant surprise, much better than its original version, nice interface, and not much to relearn over the previous one. The Organiser stuff is pretty much bloatware - I think you're much better just having a neat folder system of your own...

Simply fantastic, 27 Aug 2008
If you want to acheive fantastic results with your pictures, Photoshop Elements 6 is for you. At a fairly low price it has fantastic features for making banners, buttons, posters, collages and many more projects. It installed in no time and was easy to register. The only problem that I have is when going from my picture catalogue to the editor, it can take a little longer than expected, but it is still quite quick.

In two words - simply fantastic!

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 & Adobe Premiere Elements 7 softwarecombines the consumer photo- and video-editing software products ata great value so you can tell amazing stories with photos andvideos

A great photo editing package for home users, 06 Sep 2008
Presently on PcPro's `A-List', Adobe Elements is a cut down version of Adobe's £500+ Photoshop/Photoshop Extended CS4, and costs considerably less while still having a lot of useful photo editing capabilities. Photoshop CS4 has a steep learning curve, but Photoshop elements is far more home-user friendly. A lot of the program is geared towards image storage and management of the photos on your hard drive, helping with emailing, web output and scrapbooks of your images. The program can auto-downloads your images from the camera to folders, set up using the date, and can even process the images, say automatically removing red-eye, while it does it. Using stacks you can set up image databases [smart albums] using keywords like names, places, events, etc.., and you can even search using visual tags within the image. That said, I shun the image database options offered by Photoshop Elements and Extended, preferring the simplicity of logical folder names instead. Also, like PhotoShop, the image database side isn't seamlessly integrated into the image editing side [to the point where it's actually annoying].

New to Elements 7 is a new Quick Fix tool to soften surfaces while keeping the edge and detail sharp - i.e. a blur tool, which can help to remove unwanted image noise. Plus there's a new Scene Cleaner tool that can brush away undesirable objects from a photo [so you can ditch that car or tourists from the view] and there's now a Smart Brush which lets you instantly apply effects to a selected area of the image. Plus Element's 7 sports a new single step `whiten teeth', 'make grass greener' and `make the sky blue' tool - but this is little more than streamlining tools within Quick Select and Adjustment Layer Presets that were available on Elements 6. Besides Adobe's suggestion of using the tool to whiten teeth and add a suntan to say Aunt Doris's face may make her look a little ridiculous. Also new in Element's 7 will be a free subscription to Photoshop.com, a special service Adobe has devised to bring friends together by providing quick access to on-line backup, storage, and sharing capabilities. You get 2GB of on-line storage, `enough for up to 1,500 photos', so you can view your photos from virtually anywhere. Thus Photoshop Elements goes `Facebook', allowing you to share your photos `in fun, interactive ways via invitation-only'. For these `Online Albums' you will get new [quite fun] animated templates delivered to Elements on a regular basis. There will also be a Photoshop.com ` Plus' membership offering 20 Gb [15,000 photos] of on-line photo storage, but that will require you paying an annual fee. The first year's 20 Gb subscription is included in Adobe's `Elements 7 Plus' [but not this standard version].

And all the old Element 6's tools are there as well. For editing you have a set of 'quickfix' options or you can load the full image editor for greater manual control: such as adjust sharpness, correct camera distortion, levels, hue and skin colour. Naturally you have standard tools like crop and adjust image size (pixels) as well. Plus there are step-through guides [guided edit] to help you get there. The software will also integrate with scanners twain interfaces if you are into scanning film, and the Fill Light [shadow/highlight] tool is pretty essential for bringing out detail in shadows from any slide/negative scan. Plus Elements can handle RAW camera images, although I use TIFF/jpg (Elements can save in any common image format).

System requirements are quite high: CD drive, 1Gb system RAM, XP or Vista, 2GHz processor, and a Direct-X 9 graphics card [and Adobe installers can reject systems that don't meet the minimum spec]. Elements 7 perhaps isn't a crucial upgrade from Elements 6 or even 5, but for new home users, or those with older versions, it's very powerful photo editing and image database software from the market leaders. The new 'Scene Cleaner' tool should have been the 'killer app' for those considering upgrading, but it is little more than Elements 6's old PhotoMerge Group application and it requires a series of photos where one has the background free to copy across [and it sometimes gets the exposure wrong making the added bit look rather obvious].

Adobe Elements 7 has only two real competitors at the price: Paint Shop Pro X2 and Serif PhotoPlus X2. Both these programs are also excellent and worthy of consideration, with PhotoPlus's strength being it's about as powerful but rather cheaper to buy and upgrade. Likewise Corel Paint Shop pro X2 occasionally offers a bit more than Elements [layer masks, and curves], is also cheaper and a tad easier to use, although it can be buggy [not Adobe's strong point on first version release either - so install those patches]. Professional users and some SLR enthusiasts will still head towards Adobe's semi-automated PhotoShop Darkroom 2.0 and the fantastically expensive Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended, although even at work we have Adobe Elements on a few imaging workstations for casual users, where the high cost of PhotoShop CS4 Extended simply isn't justified. That said experienced Photoshop CS4 users will rapidly find Elements 7 lacking in a few key features they are used to.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 is also available to buy as a cheaper double pack with the new Adobe Premiere Elements 7 video editing software, which should be even better value than this upgrade. Plus this double pack qualifies for a large educational discount for non-commercial use if you, or a child in the house, are in full time education [from primary school to college]. Similar large educational discounts apply to much of Adobes software. Those buying for College/School department use will save even more.

Hopeless with Vista, 27 Oct 2008
Unfortunately, despite this being a potentially fine piece of software it is ridiculously unstable. My latop is very powerful and was bought specifically for photo editing, yet with Vista 64 the program constantly crashes (around every 10 minutes) then requires a full refresh of thumbnails before it is useable again. This can take several times with a few thousand photographs, therefore taking hours for a single edit!
Come on Adobe, get this sorted!

A good application for the price, 16 Oct 2008
I am not very experienced with photo editing software, so bought this based on Amazon reviews, as I was looking for something I could easily use to improve my digital photos.

My first impressions are that the software is good, and relatively easy to use, but not particularly intuitive. You have to really spend a bit of time practising with this to become good at using it, it is not something you will master in five minutes. However this is relatively cheap compared to some editing software, so I cannot complain too much.

I think that as I spend more time with this programme, I will become more familiar with all it's capabilities, and from what I have seen so far, it does all of the things I need it to do, including a one touch, automatic photograph enhancer, which is very useful at times!

INFURIATING, 03 Oct 2008
This is perhaps the most infuriating software I've ever used. Having had problems with earlier editions, I checked out the available books and bought the top choice with the software. I wish I hadn't bothered. Photoshop crashes most times I use it, throws up all sorts of error messages, despite installing it no less than three times. When it does work, the editor takes about five minutes to load, and the whole package is to me totally counter-intuitive. I'm going straight back to Picasa.

Good, 06 Sep 2008
My photo editor "history" goes like this:

Elements (original - awful, slugged my PC into the ground)
PSP (very good)
PhotoImpact 12 (quite excellent)

I set out to update PhotoImpact to the latest version only to find there isn't one as Corel bought Ulead and have clearly ditched it (nutters!), leaving PSP and Elements as the two mainstream editors. So I decided to become a drone and buy Elements.

What a pleasant surprise, much better than its original version, nice interface, and not much to relearn over the previous one. The Organiser stuff is pretty much bloatware - I think you're much better just having a neat folder system of your own...

Simply fantastic, 27 Aug 2008
If you want to acheive fantastic results with your pictures, Photoshop Elements 6 is for you. At a fairly low price it has fantastic features for making banners, buttons, posters, collages and many more projects. It installed in no time and was easy to register. The only problem that I have is when going from my picture catalogue to the editor, it can take a little longer than expected, but it is still quite quick.

In two words - simply fantastic!

Don't buy it, 24 Oct 2008
Photoshop Elements 6 (MAC)
Don't buy this. It's rubbish. PC program trying to run on a MAC. Spend extra and buy Aperture which is a proper MAC program. Let the PC anoraks buy this rubbish and the proper MACs win again.

Good stuff, 26 Sep 2008
I recently bought myself a Macbook, and decided that I needed some quality editing software to go with it. Being a photographer, I opted for Photoshop Elements, as I've heard good reviews about it in the past, and can't afford the full blown Photoshop [ plus, I refuse to download it illegally! ].
So what's this product like? Well, it's a doddle to get onto your Mac. I did it very quickly, and it works absolutely fine. I opened it all up and shoved one of my photographs into the program so I could have a play, and instantly got very confused. To be honest, Photoshop Elements is just a more advanced version of the program I'd used in the past for my work, so I could follow some bits, but I quickly lost it. So many buttons that aren't particularly self explanatory. They took a bit of getting used to, but I'm starting to get the hang of it now.
I think it just needs a bit of practise. You need to sit down and have a good blast; which I unfortunately don't have the time [ or patience ] for.
Good program though!

Great value, 21 Aug 2008
This is great value. I hesitated about purchasing partly because of the reviews, including the ones that say it steals the full screen. If you work in Full Edit mode it does NOT do this (or not on my MacBook at any rate) - the desktop is visible and accessible at the bottom of the screen behind the dock.

I also wondered whether I might end up paying nearly £100 for something that was not a lot better than iPhoto but much less functional than full Photoshop. In actual fact it is a significant advance on iPhoto for image manipulation and does everything I want just as well as the full version would.

The only downside I have encountered is that it is not intuitive to use and the included documentation is poor. To be fair, Adobe do recommend that you use their website Help, but I'd recommend anyone who does not have Photoshop experience to also purchase Barbara Brundage's "Photoshop elements 6 for Mac The Missing Manual".

A Photographer's Dream!, 04 Aug 2008
This is by far the best purchase I've made this year. Apart from the lengthy but not too complicated installation, this is a perfect piece of photo editing software for Digital Photographers and people of a creative nature. I use this program on my Macbook with not to much difficulty at all. It did use a lot of the resources on my laptop when I had a 1G memory but after I upgraded my memory (which was in my plans anyway) to 2G it worked even better. It does say in the box that for optimum use, it needs 1G of memory so don't try running anything else at the same time. I've used CS3 and there are probably 90% of the features on this program. Unless you are a serious professional (e.g. High end sports or nature photographer) then I really would advise you save your money and get this. I'm a semi pro photographer who has sold a quite a few pics and this works perfect! One other slight downside is Adobe's lack of putting a manual in the box. I have bought this manual Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac: The Missing Manual and it is the best manual on the market at a great price! Easy to use, in depth explanations. So if you buy this program then I seriously advise this book too!

complicated, 06 Jul 2008
loads of special effects etc, but it slows your computer down big time, also their semms to be no facility to delete photos & no explanation on how to do it, very complicated.

7.0/ englisch/ Upgrade/ Box/ WIN

A great photo editing package for home users, 06 Sep 2008
Presently on PcPro's `A-List', Adobe Elements is a cut down version of Adobe's £500+ Photoshop/Photoshop Extended CS4, and costs considerably less while still having a lot of useful photo editing capabilities. Photoshop CS4 has a steep learning curve, but Photoshop elements is far more home-user friendly. A lot of the program is geared towards image storage and management of the photos on your hard drive, helping with emailing, web output and scrapbooks of your images. The program can auto-downloads your images from the camera to folders, set up using the date, and can even process the images, say automatically removing red-eye, while it does it. Using stacks you can set up image databases [smart albums] using keywords like names, places, events, etc.., and you can even search using visual tags within the image. That said, I shun the image database options offered by Photoshop Elements and Extended, preferring the simplicity of logical folder names instead. Also, like PhotoShop, the image database side isn't seamlessly integrated into the image editing side [to the point where it's actually annoying].

New to Elements 7 is a new Quick Fix tool to soften surfaces while keeping the edge and detail sharp - i.e. a blur tool, which can help to remove unwanted image noise. Plus there's a new Scene Cleaner tool that can brush away undesirable objects from a photo [so you can ditch that car or tourists from the view] and there's now a Smart Brush which lets you instantly apply effects to a selected area of the image. Plus Element's 7 sports a new single step `whiten teeth', 'make grass greener' and `make the sky blue' tool - but this is little more than streamlining tools within Quick Select and Adjustment Layer Presets that were available on Elements 6. Besides Adobe's suggestion of using the tool to whiten teeth and add a suntan to say Aunt Doris's face may make her look a little ridiculous. Also new in Element's 7 will be a free subscription to Photoshop.com, a special service Adobe has devised to bring friends together by providing quick access to on-line backup, storage, and sharing capabilities. You get 2GB of on-line storage, `enough for up to 1,500 photos', so you can view your photos from virtually anywhere. Thus Photoshop Elements goes `Facebook', allowing you to share your photos `in fun, interactive ways via invitation-only'. For these `Online Albums' you will get new [quite fun] animated templates delivered to Elements on a regular basis. There will also be a Photoshop.com ` Plus' membership offering 20 Gb [15,000 photos] of on-line photo storage, but that will require you paying an annual fee. The first year's 20 Gb subscription is included in Adobe's `Elements 7 Plus' [but not this standard version].

And all the old Element 6's tools are there as well. For editing you have a set of 'quickfix' options or you can load the full image editor for greater manual control: such as adjust sharpness, correct camera distortion, levels, hue and skin colour. Naturally you have standard tools like crop and adjust image size (pixels) as well. Plus there are step-through guides [guided edit] to help you get there. The software will also integrate with scanners twain interfaces if you are into scanning film, and the Fill Light [shadow/highlight] tool is pretty essential for bringing out detail in shadows from any slide/negative scan. Plus Elements can handle RAW camera images, although I use TIFF/jpg (Elements can save in any common image format).

System requirements are quite high: CD drive, 1Gb system RAM, XP or Vista, 2GHz processor, and a Direct-X 9 graphics card [and Adobe installers can reject systems that don't meet the minimum spec]. Elements 7 perhaps isn't a crucial upgrade from Elements 6 or even 5, but for new home users, or those with older versions, it's very powerful photo editing and image database software from the market leaders. The new 'Scene Cleaner' tool should have been the 'killer app' for those considering upgrading, but it is little more than Elements 6's old PhotoMerge Group application and it requires a series of photos where one has the background free to copy across [and it sometimes gets the exposure wrong making the added bit look rather obvious].

Adobe Elements 7 has only two real competitors at the price: Paint Shop Pro X2 and Serif PhotoPlus X2. Both these programs are also excellent and worthy of consideration, with PhotoPlus's strength being it's about as powerful but rather cheaper to buy and upgrade. Likewise Corel Paint Shop pro X2 occasionally offers a bit more than Elements [layer masks, and curves], is also cheaper and a tad easier to use, although it can be buggy [not Adobe's strong point on first version release either - so install those patches]. Professional users and some SLR enthusiasts will still head towards Adobe's semi-automated PhotoShop Darkroom 2.0 and the fantastically expensive Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended, although even at work we have Adobe Elements on a few imaging workstations for casual users, where the high cost of PhotoShop CS4 Extended simply isn't justified. That said experienced Photoshop CS4 users will rapidly find Elements 7 lacking in a few key features they are used to.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 is also available to buy as a cheaper double pack with the new Adobe Premiere Elements 7 video editing software, which should be even better value than this upgrade. Plus this double pack qualifies for a large educational discount for non-commercial use if you, or a child in the house, are in full time education [from primary school to college]. Similar large educational discounts apply to much of Adobes software. Those buying for College/School department use will save even more.

Hopeless with Vista, 27 Oct 2008
Unfortunately, despite this being a potentially fine piece of software it is ridiculously unstable. My latop is very powerful and was bought specifically for photo editing, yet with Vista 64 the program constantly crashes (around every 10 minutes) then requires a full refresh of thumbnails before it is useable again. This can take several times with a few thousand photographs, therefore taking hours for a single edit!
Come on Adobe, get this sorted!

A good application for the price, 16 Oct 2008
I am not very experienced with photo editing software, so bought this based on Amazon reviews, as I was looking for something I could easily use to improve my digital photos.

My first impressions are that the software is good, and relatively easy to use, but not particularly intuitive. You have to really spend a bit of time practising with this to become good at using it, it is not something you will master in five minutes. However this is relatively cheap compared to some editing software, so I cannot complain too much.

I think that as I spend more time with this programme, I will become more familiar with all it's capabilities, and from what I have seen so far, it does all of the things I need it to do, including a one touch, automatic photograph enhancer, which is very useful at times!

INFURIATING, 03 Oct 2008
This is perhaps the most infuriating software I've ever used. Having had problems with earlier editions, I checked out the available books and bought the top choice with the software. I wish I hadn't bothered. Photoshop crashes most times I use it, throws up all sorts of error messages, despite installing it no less than three times. When it does work, the editor takes about five minutes to load, and the whole package is to me totally counter-intuitive. I'm going straight back to Picasa.

Good, 06 Sep 2008
My photo editor "history" goes like this:

Elements (original - awful, slugged my PC into the ground)
PSP (very good)
PhotoImpact 12 (quite excellent)

I set out to update PhotoImpact to the latest version only to find there isn't one as Corel bought Ulead and have clearly ditched it (nutters!), leaving PSP and Elements as the two mainstream editors. So I decided to become a drone and buy Elements.

What a pleasant surprise, much better than its original version, nice interface, and not much to relearn over the previous one. The Organiser stuff is pretty much bloatware - I think you're much better just having a neat folder system of your own...

Simply fantastic, 27 Aug 2008
If you want to acheive fantastic results with your pictures, Photoshop Elements 6 is for you. At a fairly low price it has fantastic features for making banners, buttons, posters, collages and many more projects. It installed in no time and was easy to register. The only problem that I have is when going from my picture catalogue to the editor, it can take a little longer than expected, but it is still quite quick.

In two words - simply fantastic!

Don't buy it, 24 Oct 2008
Photoshop Elements 6 (MAC)
Don't buy this. It's rubbish. PC program trying to run on a MAC. Spend extra and buy Aperture which is a proper MAC program. Let the PC anoraks buy this rubbish and the proper MACs win again.

Good stuff, 26 Sep 2008
I recently bought myself a Macbook, and decided that I needed some quality editing software to go with it. Being a photographer, I opted for Photoshop Elements, as I've heard good reviews about it in the past, and can't afford the full blown Photoshop [ plus, I refuse to download it illegally! ].
So what's this product like? Well, it's a doddle to get onto your Mac. I did it very quickly, and it works absolutely fine. I opened it all up and shoved one of my photographs into the program so I could have a play, and instantly got very confused. To be honest, Photoshop Elements is just a more advanced version of the program I'd used in the past for my work, so I could follow some bits, but I quickly lost it. So many buttons that aren't particularly self explanatory. They took a bit of getting used to, but I'm starting to get the hang of it now.
I think it just needs a bit of practise. You need to sit down and have a good blast; which I unfortunately don't have the time [ or patience ] for.
Good program though!

Great value, 21 Aug 2008
This is great value. I hesitated about purchasing partly because of the reviews, including the ones that say it steals the full screen. If you work in Full Edit mode it does NOT do this (or not on my MacBook at any rate) - the desktop is visible and accessible at the bottom of the screen behind the dock.

I also wondered whether I might end up paying nearly £100 for something that was not a lot better than iPhoto but much less functional than full Photoshop. In actual fact it is a significant advance on iPhoto for image manipulation and does everything I want just as well as the full version would.

The only downside I have encountered is that it is not intuitive to use and the included documentation is poor. To be fair, Adobe do recommend that you use their website Help, but I'd recommend anyone who does not have Photoshop experience to also purchase Barbara Brundage's "Photoshop elements 6 for Mac The Missing Manual".

A Photographer's Dream!, 04 Aug 2008
This is by far the best purchase I've made this year. Apart from the lengthy but not too complicated installation, this is a perfect piece of photo editing software for Digital Photographers and people of a creative nature. I use this program on my Macbook with not to much difficulty at all. It did use a lot of the resources on my laptop when I had a 1G memory but after I upgraded my memory (which was in my plans anyway) to 2G it worked even better. It does say in the box that for optimum use, it needs 1G of memory so don't try running anything else at the same time. I've used CS3 and there are probably 90% of the features on this program. Unless you are a serious professional (e.g. High end sports or nature photographer) then I really would advise you save your money and get this. I'm a semi pro photographer who has sold a quite a few pics and this works perfect! One other slight downside is Adobe's lack of putting a manual in the box. I have bought this manual Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac: The Missing Manual and it is the best manual on the market at a great price! Easy to use, in depth explanations. So if you buy this program then I seriously advise this book too!

complicated, 06 Jul 2008
loads of special effects etc, but it slows your computer down big time, also their semms to be no facility to delete photos & no explanation on how to do it, very complicated.

A great photo editing package for home users - but not an essential upgrade for version 6 users, 05 Sep 2008
Presently on PcPro's `A-List', Adobe Elements is a cut down version of Adobe's £500+ Photoshop/Photoshop Extended CS4, and costs considerably less while still having a lot of useful photo editing capabilities. Photoshop CS4 has a steep learning curve, but Photoshop elements is far more home-user friendly. A lot of the program is geared towards image storage and management of the photos on your hard drive, helping with emailing, web output and scrapbooks of your images. The program can auto-downloads your images from the camera to folders, set up using the date, and can even process the images, say automatically removing red-eye, while it does it. Using stacks you can set up image databases [smart albums] using keywords like names, places, events, etc.., and you can even search using visual tags within the image. That said, I shun the image database options offered by Photoshop Elements and Extended, preferring the simplicity of logical folder names instead. Also, like PhotoShop, the image database side isn't seamlessly integrated into the image editing side [to the point where it's actually annoying].

New to Elements 7 is a new Quick Fix tool to soften surfaces while keeping the edge and detail sharp - i.e. a blur tool, which can help to remove unwanted image noise. Plus there's a new Scene Cleaner tool that can brush away undesirable objects from a photo [so you can ditch that car or tourists from the view] and there's now a Smart Brush which lets you instantly apply effects to a selected area of the image. Plus Element's 7 sports a new single step `whiten teeth', 'make grass greener' and `make the sky blue' tool - but this is little more than streamlining tools within Quick Select and Adjustment Layer Presets that were available on Elements 6. Besides Adobe's suggestion of using the tool to whiten teeth and add a suntan to say Aunt Doris's face may make her look a little ridiculous. Also new in Element's 7 will be a free subscription to Photoshop.com, a special service Adobe has devised to bring friends together by providing quick access to on-line backup, storage, and sharing capabilities. You get 2GB of on-line storage, `enough for up to 1,500 photos', so you can view your photos from virtually anywhere. Thus Photoshop Elements goes `Facebook', allowing you to share your photos `in fun, interactive ways via invitation-only'. For these `Online Albums' you will get new [quite fun] animated templates delivered to Elements on a regular basis. There will also be a Photoshop.com ` Plus' membership offering 20 Gb [15,000 photos] of on-line photo storage, but that will require you paying an annual fee. The first year's 20 Gb subscription is included in Adobe's `Elements 7 Plus' [but not this standard version].

All the old Elements tools are there as well. For editing you have a set of 'quickfix' options or you can load the full image editor for greater manual control: such as adjust sharpness, correct camera distortion, levels, hue and skin colour. Naturally you have standard tools like crop and adjust image size (pixels) as well. You can now do things like brush away wrinkles with the spot healing/healing brush, use clone overlays, make improved B&W images, add image vibrance and clarity, make composite pictures, copy and even blend parts from different images [to say swap faces from a series of photo's so that all your kids are smiling at the camera in one image, i.e. using the PhotoMerge tool]. You also get a layers palette for composites, shapes, text effects and frames. Plus there are step-through guides [guided edit] to help you get there. The software will also integrate with scanners twain interfaces if you are into scanning film, and the Fill Light [shadow/highlight] tool is pretty essential for bringing out detail in shadows from any slide/negative scan. Plus Elements can handle RAW camera images, although I use TIFF/jpg (Elements can save in any common image format).

System requirements are quite high: CD drive, 1Gb system RAM, XP or Vista, 2GHz processor, and a Direct-X 9 graphics card [and Adobe installers can reject systems that don't meet the minimum spec]. Elements 7 perhaps isn't a crucial upgrade from Elements 6 or even 5, but for new home users, or those with older versions, it's very powerful photo editing and image database software from the market leaders. The new 'Scene Cleaner' tool should have been the 'killer app' for those considering upgrading, but it is little more than Elements 6's old PhotoMerge Group application and it requires a series of photos where one has the background free to copy across [and it sometimes gets the exposure wrong making the added bit look rather obvious]. Sadly Adobe's upgrade pricing makes this an expensive option, as typically a full licenced version is only £10 more.

Adobe Elements 7 has only two real competitors at the price: Paint Shop Pro X2 and Serif PhotoPlus X2. Both these programs are also excellent and worthy of consideration, with PhotoPlus's strength being it's about as powerful but rather cheaper to buy and upgrade. Likewise Corel Paint Shop pro X2 occasionally offers a bit more than Elements [layer masks, and curves], is also cheaper and a tad easier to use, although it can be buggy [not Adobe's strong point on first version release either - so install those patches]. Professional users and some SLR enthusiasts will still head towards Adobe's semi-automated PhotoShop Darkroom 2.0 and the fantastically expensive Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended, although even at work we have Adobe Elements on a few imaging workstations for casual users, where the high cost of PhotoShop CS4 Extended simply isn't justified. That said experienced Photoshop CS4 users will rapidly find Elements 7 lacking in a few key features they are used to.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 is also available to buy as a cheaper double pack with the updated Adobe Premiere Elements 7 video editing software, which should be even better value than this upgrade. Plus this double pack qualifies for a large educational discount for non-commercial use if you, or a child in the house, are in full time education [from primary school to college]. Similar large educational discounts apply to much of Adobes software. Those buying for College/School department use will save even more.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 software is essential for today'sdigital photography workflow. Now you can quickly import processmanage and showcase your images — from one shot to an entireshoot. With Lightroom 2 you spend less time in front of th

A great photo editing package for home users, 06 Sep 2008
Presently on PcPro's `A-List', Adobe Elements is a cut down version of Adobe's £500+ Photoshop/Photoshop Extended CS4, and costs considerably less while still having a lot of useful photo editing capabilities. Photoshop CS4 has a steep learning curve, but Photoshop elements is far more home-user friendly. A lot of the program is geared towards image storage and management of the photos on your hard drive, helping with emailing, web output and scrapbooks of your images. The program can auto-downloads your images from the camera to folders, set up using the date, and can even process the images, say automatically removing red-eye, while it does it. Using stacks you can set up image databases [smart albums] using keywords like names, places, events, etc.., and you can even search using visual tags within the image. That said, I shun the image database options offered by Photoshop Elements and Extended, preferring the simplicity of logical folder names instead. Also, like PhotoShop, the image database side isn't seamlessly integrated into the image editing side [to the point where it's actually annoying].

New to Elements 7 is a new Quick Fix tool to soften surfaces while keeping the edge and detail sharp - i.e. a blur tool, which can help to remove unwanted image noise. Plus there's a new Scene Cleaner tool that can brush away undesirable objects from a photo [so you can ditch that car or tourists from the view] and there's now a Smart Brush which lets you instantly apply effects to a selected area of the image. Plus Element's 7 sports a new single step `whiten teeth', 'make grass greener' and `make the sky blue' tool - but this is little more than streamlining tools within Quick Select and Adjustment Layer Presets that were available on Elements 6. Besides Adobe's suggestion of using the tool to whiten teeth and add a suntan to say Aunt Doris's face may make her look a little ridiculous. Also new in Element's 7 will be a free subscription to Photoshop.com, a special service Adobe has devised to bring friends together by providing quick access to on-line backup, storage, and sharing capabilities. You get 2GB of on-line storage, `enough for up to 1,500 photos', so you can view your photos from virtually anywhere. Thus Photoshop Elements goes `Facebook', allowing you to share your photos `in fun, interactive ways via invitation-only'. For these `Online Albums' you will get new [quite fun] animated templates delivered to Elements on a regular basis. There will also be a Photoshop.com ` Plus' membership offering 20 Gb [15,000 photos] of on-line photo storage, but that will require you paying an annual fee. The first year's 20 Gb subscription is included in Adobe's `Elements 7 Plus' [but not this standard version].

And all the old Element 6's tools are there as well. For editing you have a set of 'quickfix' options or you can load the full image editor for greater manual control: such as adjust sharpness, correct camera distortion, levels, hue and skin colour. Naturally you have standard tools like crop and adjust image size (pixels) as well. Plus there are step-through guides [guided edit] to help you get there. The software will also integrate with scanners twain interfaces if you are into scanning film, and the Fill Light [shadow/highlight] tool is pretty essential for bringing out detail in shadows from any slide/negative scan. Plus Elements can handle RAW camera images, although I use TIFF/jpg (Elements can save in any common image format).

System requirements are quite high: CD drive, 1Gb system RAM, XP or Vista, 2GHz processor, and a Direct-X 9 graphics card [and Adobe installers can reject systems that don't meet the minimum spec]. Elements 7 perhaps isn't a crucial upgrade from Elements 6 or even 5, but for new home users, or those with older versions, it's very powerful photo editing and image database software from the market leaders. The new 'Scene Cleaner' tool should have been the 'killer app' for those considering upgrading, but it is little more than Elements 6's old PhotoMerge Group application and it requires a series of photos where one has the background free to copy across [and it sometimes gets the exposure wrong making the added bit look rather obvious].

Adobe Elements 7 has only two real competitors at the price: Paint Shop Pro X2 and Serif PhotoPlus X2. Both these programs are also excellent and worthy of consideration, with PhotoPlus's strength being it's about as powerful but rather cheaper to buy and upgrade. Likewise Corel Paint Shop pro X2 occasionally offers a bit more than Elements [layer masks, and curves], is also cheaper and a tad easier to use, although it can be buggy [not Adobe's strong point on first version release either - so install those patches]. Professional users and some SLR enthusiasts will still head towards Adobe's semi-automated PhotoShop Darkroom 2.0 and the fantastically expensive Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended, although even at work we have Adobe Elements on a few imaging workstations for casual users, where the high cost of PhotoShop CS4 Extended simply isn't justified. That said experienced Photoshop CS4 users will rapidly find Elements 7 lacking in a few key features they are used to.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 is also available to buy as a cheaper double pack with the new Adobe Premiere Elements 7 video editing software, which should be even better value than this upgrade. Plus this double pack qualifies for a large educational discount for non-commercial use if you, or a child in the house, are in full time education [from primary school to college]. Similar large educational discounts apply to much of Adobes software. Those buying for College/School department use will save even more.

Hopeless with Vista, 27 Oct 2008
Unfortunately, despite this being a potentially fine piece of software it is ridiculously unstable. My latop is very powerful and was bought specifically for photo editing, yet with Vista 64 the program constantly crashes (around every 10 minutes) then requires a full refresh of thumbnails before it is useable again. This can take several times with a few thousand photographs, therefore taking hours for a single edit!
Come on Adobe, get this sorted!

A good application for the price, 16 Oct 2008
I am not very experienced with photo editing software, so bought this based on Amazon reviews, as I was looking for something I could easily use to improve my digital photos.

My first impressions are that the software is good, and relatively easy to use, but not particularly intuitive. You have to really spend a bit of time practising with this to become good at using it, it is not something you will master in five minutes. However this is relatively cheap compared to some editing software, so I cannot complain too much.

I think that as I spend more time with this programme, I will become more familiar with all it's capabilities, and from what I have seen so far, it does all of the things I need it to do, including a one touch, automatic photograph enhancer, which is very useful at times!

INFURIATING, 03 Oct 2008
This is perhaps the most infuriating software I've ever used. Having had problems with earlier editions, I checked out the available books and bought the top choice with the software. I wish I hadn't bothered. Photoshop crashes most times I use it, throws up all sorts of error messages, despite installing it no less than three times. When it does work, the editor takes about five minutes to load, and the whole package is to me totally counter-intuitive. I'm going straight back to Picasa.

Good, 06 Sep 2008
My photo editor "history" goes like this:

Elements (original - awful, slugged my PC into the ground)
PSP (very good)
PhotoImpact 12 (quite excellent)

I set out to update PhotoImpact to the latest version only to find there isn't one as Corel bought Ulead and have clearly ditched it (nutters!), leaving PSP and Elements as the two mainstream editors. So I decided to become a drone and buy Elements.

What a pleasant surprise, much better than its original version, nice interface, and not much to relearn over the previous one. The Organiser stuff is pretty much bloatware - I think you're much better just having a neat folder system of your own...

Simply fantastic, 27 Aug 2008
If you want to acheive fantastic results with your pictures, Photoshop Elements 6 is for you. At a fairly low price it has fantastic features for making banners, buttons, posters, collages and many more projects. It installed in no time and was easy to register. The only problem that I have is when going from my picture catalogue to the editor, it can take a little longer than expected, but it is still quite quick.

In two words - simply fantastic!

Don't buy it, 24 Oct 2008
Photoshop Elements 6 (MAC)
Don't buy this. It's rubbish. PC program trying to run on a MAC. Spend extra and buy Aperture which is a proper MAC program. Let the PC anoraks buy this rubbish and the proper MACs win again.

Good stuff, 26 Sep 2008
I recently bought myself a Macbook, and decided that I needed some quality editing software to go with it. Being a photographer, I opted for Photoshop Elements, as I've heard good reviews about it in the past, and can't afford the full blown Photoshop [ plus, I refuse to download it illegally! ].
So what's this product like? Well, it's a doddle to get onto your Mac. I did it very quickly, and it works absolutely fine. I opened it all up and shoved one of my photographs into the program so I could have a play, and instantly got very confused. To be honest, Photoshop Elements is just a more advanced version of the program I'd used in the past for my work, so I could follow some bits, but I quickly lost it. So many buttons that aren't particularly self explanatory. They took a bit of getting used to, but I'm starting to get the hang of it now.
I think it just needs a bit of practise. You need to sit down and have a good blast; which I unfortunately don't have the time [ or patience ] for.
Good program though!

Great value, 21 Aug 2008
This is great value. I hesitated about purchasing partly because of the reviews, including the ones that say it steals the full screen. If you work in Full Edit mode it does NOT do this (or not on my MacBook at any rate) - the desktop is visible and accessible at the bottom of the screen behind the dock.

I also wondered whether I might end up paying nearly £100 for something that was not a lot better than iPhoto but much less functional than full Photoshop. In actual fact it is a significant advance on iPhoto for image manipulation and does everything I want just as well as the full version would.

The only downside I have encountered is that it is not intuitive to use and the included documentation is poor. To be fair, Adobe do recommend that you use their website Help, but I'd recommend anyone who does not have Photoshop experience to also purchase Barbara Brundage's "Photoshop elements 6 for Mac The Missing Manual".

A Photographer's Dream!, 04 Aug 2008
This is by far the best purchase I've made this year. Apart from the lengthy but not too complicated installation, this is a perfect piece of photo editing software for Digital Photographers and people of a creative nature. I use this program on my Macbook with not to much difficulty at all. It did use a lot of the resources on my laptop when I had a 1G memory but after I upgraded my memory (which was in my plans anyway) to 2G it worked even better. It does say in the box that for optimum use, it needs 1G of memory so don't try running anything else at the same time. I've used CS3 and there are probably 90% of the features on this program. Unless you are a serious professional (e.g. High end sports or nature photographer) then I really would advise you save your money and get this. I'm a semi pro photographer who has sold a quite a few pics and this works perfect! One other slight downside is Adobe's lack of putting a manual in the box. I have bought this manual Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac: The Missing Manual and it is the best manual on the market at a great price! Easy to use, in depth explanations. So if you buy this program then I seriously advise this book too!

complicated, 06 Jul 2008
loads of special effects etc, but it slows your computer down big time, also their semms to be no facility to delete photos & no explanation on how to do it, very complicated.

A great photo editing package for home users - but not an essential upgrade for version 6 users, 05 Sep 2008
Presently on PcPro's `A-List', Adobe Elements is a cut down version of Adobe's £500+ Photoshop/Photoshop Extended CS4, and costs considerably less while still having a lot of useful photo editing capabilities. Photoshop CS4 has a steep learning curve, but Photoshop elements is far more home-user friendly. A lot of the program is geared towards image storage and management of the photos on your hard drive, helping with emailing, web output and scrapbooks of your images. The program can auto-downloads your images from the camera to folders, set up using the date, and can even process the images, say automatically removing red-eye, while it does it. Using stacks you can set up image databases [smart albums] using keywords like names, places, events, etc.., and you can even search using visual tags within the image. That said, I shun the image database options offered by Photoshop Elements and Extended, preferring the simplicity of logical folder names instead. Also, like PhotoShop, the image database side isn't seamlessly integrated into the image editing side [to the point where it's actually annoying].

New to Elements 7 is a new Quick Fix tool to soften surfaces while keeping the edge and detail sharp - i.e. a blur tool, which can help to remove unwanted image noise. Plus there's a new Scene Cleaner tool that can brush away undesirable objects from a photo [so you can ditch that car or tourists from the view] and there's now a Smart Brush which lets you instantly apply effects to a selected area of the image. Plus Element's 7 sports a new single step `whiten teeth', 'make grass greener' and `make the sky blue' tool - but this is little more than streamlining tools within Quick Select and Adjustment Layer Presets that were available on Elements 6. Besides Adobe's suggestion of using the tool to whiten teeth and add a suntan to say Aunt Doris's face may make her look a little ridiculous. Also new in Element's 7 will be a free subscription to Photoshop.com, a special service Adobe has devised to bring friends together by providing quick access to on-line backup, storage, and sharing capabilities. You get 2GB of on-line storage, `enough for up to 1,500 photos', so you can view your photos from virtually anywhere. Thus Photoshop Elements goes `Facebook', allowing you to share your photos `in fun, interactive ways via invitation-only'. For these `Online Albums' you will get new [quite fun] animated templates delivered to Elements on a regular basis. There will also be a Photoshop.com ` Plus' membership offering 20 Gb [15,000 photos] of on-line photo storage, but that will require you paying an annual fee. The first year's 20 Gb subscription is included in Adobe's `Elements 7 Plus' [but not this standard version].

All the old Elements tools are there as well. For editing you have a set of 'quickfix' options or you can load the full image editor for greater manual control: such as adjust sharpness, correct camera distortion, levels, hue and skin colour. Naturally you have standard tools like crop and adjust image size (pixels) as well. You can now do things like brush away wrinkles with the spot healing/healing brush, use clone overlays, make improved B&W images, add image vibrance and clarity, make composite pictures, copy and even blend parts from different images [to say swap faces from a series of photo's so that all your kids are smiling at the camera in one image, i.e. using the PhotoMerge tool]. You also get a layers palette for composites, shapes, text effects and frames. Plus there are step-through guides [guided edit] to help you get there. The software will also integrate with scanners twain interfaces if you are into scanning film, and the Fill Light [shadow/highlight] tool is pretty essential for bringing out detail in shadows from any slide/negative scan. Plus Elements can handle RAW camera images, although I use TIFF/jpg (Elements can save in any common image format).

System requirements are quite high: CD drive, 1Gb system RAM, XP or Vista, 2GHz processor, and a Direct-X 9 graphics card [and Adobe installers can reject systems that don't meet the minimum spec]. Elements 7 perhaps isn't a crucial upgrade from Elements 6 or even 5, but for new home users, or those with older versions, it's very powerful photo editing and image database software from the market leaders. The new 'Scene Cleaner' tool should have been the 'killer app' for those considering upgrading, but it is little more than Elements 6's old PhotoMerge Group application and it requires a series of photos where one has the background free to copy across [and it sometimes gets the exposure wrong making the added bit look rather obvious]. Sadly Adobe's upgrade pricing makes this an expensive option, as typically a full licenced version is only £10 more.

Adobe Elements 7 has only two real competitors at the price: Paint Shop Pro X2 and Serif PhotoPlus X2. Both these programs are also excellent and worthy of consideration, with PhotoPlus's strength being it's about as powerful but rather cheaper to buy and upgrade. Likewise Corel Paint Shop pro X2 occasionally offers a bit more than Elements [layer masks, and curves], is also cheaper and a tad easier to use, although it can be buggy [not Adobe's strong point on first version release either - so install those patches]. Professional users and some SLR enthusiasts will still head towards Adobe's semi-automated PhotoShop Darkroom 2.0 and the fantastically expensive Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended, although even at work we have Adobe Elements on a few imaging workstations for casual users, where the high cost of PhotoShop CS4 Extended simply isn't justified. That said experienced Photoshop CS4 users will rapidly find Elements 7 lacking in a few key features they are used to.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 is also available to buy as a cheaper double pack with the updated Adobe Premiere Elements 7 video editing software, which should be even better value than this upgrade. Plus this double pack qualifies for a large educational discount for non-commercial use if you, or a child in the house, are in full time education [from primary school to college]. Similar large educational discounts apply to much of Adobes software. Those buying for College/School department use will save even more.

An significant upgrade to a great application, 26 Oct 2008
Ideal for anyone with an expensive camera, image management software Photoshop darkroom 1.0 was a great image editing and processing application. Now Lightroom 2.0 has arrived. Lightroom is kind of a batch processing application where it uploads photos from your camera card, tags and sorts them, and then allows image editing [cropping, enhancement, optimisation] before exporting them to disk, printer or web/email. It has a powerful set of editing tools built in and almost removes the need for a separate image editor like Photoshop CS4. You can download a 30 day trial from Adobe to see if it meets your requirements or whether budget consumer Adobe Photoshop Elements 7.0 or the fantastically expensive Adobe PhotoShop CS4 is more suitable for your needs. Lightroom 2.0 does even integrate into PhotoShop CS4 if you are lucky enough to own it. Lightroom 2.0 is an ideal application if you have to shoot loads of photos one minute and pass them on to visitors the next, or you simply want to minimise image editing time on the PC and get out there again with your camera.

The only downside is that the full version price of Lightroom 2.0 has jumped up to £230, although this makes the far cheaper upgrade price seem better value if you already own Lightroom 1.0, particularly as this is a worthwhile upgrade. The most obvious change in Lightroom 2.0 are dual monitor support, more options for localized image processing/editing, an ability to take 3rd-party plug-ins, better 'removable drive' handling and the 'smart collections' image database tool. Be warned though the application layout has changed and you need Adobe's latest update patches and a fast multi-core Intel graphics workstation PC to get Darkroom running smoothly [which I have]. Plus I don't care for the trendy charcoal gray interface, text has been black on white since the written word was invented millennia ago for a good reason, and classic XP/Vista window colour schemes and layout are simply more practical during use. It does help you concentrate on the image though I suppose, and it recreates that vintage darkroom feel [where you can't see squat else]. Still that's a minor quibble given the merits of the application. School kids, college students and departments will qualify for significant educational discounts on all Adobe's software, so check these out if that includes you. Visit Adobe for further details of the software & educational discounts.

PC system requirements are a Pentium 4, XP or Vista Premium, 1Gb system RAM, 1GB hard-disk space and a 1,024x768 display. The fact that AMD processors aren't mentioned might be significant. Adobe installers often reject any PC that falls below the minimum spec, plus 4Gb system memory and a fast graphics card will certainly speed things up. To quote Adobe: "The new Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 is the serious photographer's essential toolbox, providing one easy application for managing, adjusting, and presenting large volumes of digital photographs so you can spend less time in front of the computer and more time behind the lens."

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 software is essential for today'sdigital photography workflow. Now you can quickly import processmanage and showcase your images — from one shot to an entireshoot. With Lightroom 2 you spend less time in front of th

A great photo editing package for home users, 06 Sep 2008
Presently on PcPro's `A-List', Adobe Elements is a cut down version of Adobe's £500+ Photoshop/Photoshop Extended CS4, and costs considerably less while still having a lot of useful photo editing capabilities. Photoshop CS4 has a steep learning curve, but Photoshop elements is far more home-user friendly. A lot of the program is geared towards image storage and management of the photos on your hard drive, helping with emailing, web output and scrapbooks of your images. The program can auto-downloads your images from the camera to folders, set up using the date, and can even process the images, say automatically removing red-eye, while it does it. Using stacks you can set up image databases [smart albums] using keywords like names, places, events, etc.., and you can even search using visual tags within the image. That said, I shun the image database options offered by Photoshop Elements and Extended, preferring the simplicity of logical folder names instead. Also, like PhotoShop, the image database side isn't seamlessly integrated into the image editing side [to the point where it's actually annoying].

New to Elements 7 is a new Quick Fix tool to soften surfaces while keeping the edge and detail sharp - i.e. a blur tool, which can help to remove unwanted image noise. Plus there's a new Scene Cleaner tool that can brush away undesirable objects from a photo [so you can ditch that car or tourists from the view] and there's now a Smart Brush which lets you instantly apply effects to a selected area of the image. Plus Element's 7 sports a new single step `whiten teeth', 'make grass greener' and `make the sky blue' tool - but this is little more than streamlining tools within Quick Select and Adjustment Layer Presets that were available on Elements 6. Besides Adobe's suggestion of using the tool to whiten teeth and add a suntan to say Aunt Doris's face may make her look a little ridiculous. Also new in Element's 7 will be a free subscription to Photoshop.com, a special service Adobe has devised to bring friends together by providing quick access to on-line backup, storage, and sharing capabilities. You get 2GB of on-line storage, `enough for up to 1,500 photos', so you can view your photos from virtually anywhere. Thus Photoshop Elements goes `Facebook', allowing you to share your photos `in fun, interactive ways via invitation-only'. For these `Online Albums' you will get new [quite fun] animated templates delivered to Elements on a regular basis. There will also be a Photoshop.com ` Plus' membership offering 20 Gb [15,000 photos] of on-line photo storage, but that will require you paying an annual fee. The first year's 20 Gb subscription is included in Adobe's `Elements 7 Plus' [but not this standard version].

And all the old Element 6's tools are there as well. For editing you have a set of 'quickfix' options or you can load the full image editor for greater manual control: such as adjust sharpness, correct camera distortion, levels, hue and skin colour. Naturally you have standard tools like crop and adjust image size (pixels) as well. Plus there are step-through guides [guided edit] to help you get there. The software will also integrate with scanners twain interfaces if you are into scanning film, and the Fill Light [shadow/highlight] tool is pretty essential for bringing out detail in shadows from any slide/negative scan. Plus Elements can handle RAW camera images, although I use TIFF/jpg (Elements can save in any common image format).

System requirements are quite high: CD drive, 1Gb system RAM, XP or Vista, 2GHz processor, and a Direct-X 9 graphics card [and Adobe installers can reject systems that don't meet the minimum spec]. Elements 7 perhaps isn't a crucial upgrade from Elements 6 or even 5, but for new home users, or those with older versions, it's very powerful photo editing and image database software from the market leaders. The new 'Scene Cleaner' tool should have been the 'killer app' for those considering upgrading, but it is little more than Elements 6's old PhotoMerge Group application and it requires a series of photos where one has the background free to copy across [and it sometimes gets the exposure wrong making the added bit look rather obvious].

Adobe Elements 7 has only two real competitors at the price: Paint Shop Pro X2 and Serif PhotoPlus X2. Both these programs are also excellent and worthy of consideration, with PhotoPlus's strength being it's about as powerful but rather cheaper to buy and upgrade. Likewise Corel Paint Shop pro X2 occasionally offers a bit more than Elements [layer masks, and curves], is also cheaper and a tad easier to use, although it can be buggy [not Adobe's strong point on first version release either - so install those patches]. Professional users and some SLR enthusiasts will still head towards Adobe's semi-automated PhotoShop Darkroom 2.0 and the fantastically expensive Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended, although even at work we have Adobe Elements on a few imaging workstations for casual users, where the high cost of PhotoShop CS4 Extended simply isn't justified. That said experienced Photoshop CS4 users will rapidly find Elements 7 lacking in a few key features they are used to.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 is also available to buy as a cheaper double pack with the new Adobe Premiere Elements 7 video editing software, which should be even better value than this upgrade. Plus this double pack qualifies for a large educational discount for non-commercial use if you, or a child in the house, are in full time education [from primary school to college]. Similar large educational discounts apply to much of Adobes software. Those buying for College/School department use will save even more.

Hopeless with Vista, 27 Oct 2008
Unfortunately, despite this being a potentially fine piece of software it is ridiculously unstable. My latop is very powerful and was bought specifically for photo editing, yet with Vista 64 the program constantly crashes (around every 10 minutes) then requires a full refresh of thumbnails before it is useable again. This can take several times with a few thousand photographs, therefore taking hours for a single edit!
Come on Adobe, get this sorted!

A good application for the price, 16 Oct 2008
I am not very experienced with photo editing software, so bought this based on Amazon reviews, as I was looking for something I could easily use to improve my digital photos.

My first impressions are that the software is good, and relatively easy to use, but not particularly intuitive. You have to really spend a bit of time practising with this to become good at using it, it is not something you will master in five minutes. However this is relatively cheap compared to some editing software, so I cannot complain too much.

I think that as I spend more time with this programme, I will become more familiar with all it's capabilities, and from what I have seen so far, it does all of the things I need it to do, including a one touch, automatic photograph enhancer, which is very useful at times!

INFURIATING, 03 Oct 2008
This is perhaps the most infuriating software I've ever used. Having had problems with earlier editions, I checked out the available books and bought the top choice with the software. I wish I hadn't bothered. Photoshop crashes most times I use it, throws up all sorts of error messages, despite installing it no less than three times. When it does work, the editor takes about five minutes to load, and the whole package is to me totally counter-intuitive. I'm going straight back to Picasa.

Good, 06 Sep 2008
My photo editor "history" goes like this:

Elements (original - awful, slugged my PC into the ground)
PSP (very good)
PhotoImpact 12 (quite excellent)

I set out to update PhotoImpact to the latest version only to find there isn't one as Corel bought Ulead and have clearly ditched it (nutters!), leaving PSP and Elements as the two mainstream editors. So I decided to become a drone and buy Elements.

What a pleasant surprise, much better than its original version, nice interface, and not much to relearn over the previous one. The Organiser stuff is pretty much bloatware - I think you're much better just having a neat folder system of your own...

Simply fantastic, 27 Aug 2008
If you want to acheive fantastic results with your pictures, Photoshop Elements 6 is for you. At a fairly low price it has fantastic features for making banners, buttons, posters, collages and many more projects. It installed in no time and was easy to register. The only problem that I have is when going from my picture catalogue to the editor, it can take a little longer than expected, but it is still quite quick.

In two words - simply fantastic!

Don't buy it, 24 Oct 2008
Photoshop Elements 6 (MAC)
Don't buy this. It's rubbish. PC program trying to run on a MAC. Spend extra and buy Aperture which is a proper MAC program. Let the PC anoraks buy this rubbish and the proper MACs win again.

Good stuff, 26 Sep 2008
I recently bought myself a Macbook, and decided that I needed some quality editing software to go with it. Being a photographer, I opted for Photoshop Elements, as I've heard good reviews about it in the past, and can't afford the full blown Photoshop [ plus, I refuse to download it illegally! ].
So what's this product like? Well, it's a doddle to get onto your Mac. I did it very quickly, and it works absolutely fine. I opened it all up and shoved one of my photographs into the program so I could have a play, and instantly got very confused. To be honest, Photoshop Elements is just a more advanced version of the program I'd used in the past for my work, so I could follow some bits, but I quickly lost it. So many buttons that aren't particularly self explanatory. They took a bit of getting used to, but I'm starting to get the hang of it now.
I think it just needs a bit of practise. You need to sit down and have a good blast; which I unfortunately don't have the time [ or patience ] for.
Good program though!

Great value, 21 Aug 2008
This is great value. I hesitated about purchasing partly because of the reviews, including the ones that say it steals the full screen. If you work in Full Edit mode it does NOT do this (or not on my MacBook at any rate) - the desktop is visible and accessible at the bottom of the screen behind the dock.

I also wondered whether I might end up paying nearly £100 for something that was not a lot better than iPhoto but much less functional than full Photoshop. In actual fact it is a significant advance on iPhoto for image manipulation and does everything I want just as well as the full version would.

The only downside I have encountered is that it is not intuitive to use and the included documentation is poor. To be fair, Adobe do recommend that you use their website Help, but I'd recommend anyone who does not have Photoshop experience to also purchase Barbara Brundage's "Photoshop elements 6 for Mac The Missing Manual".

A Photographer's Dream!, 04 Aug 2008
This is by far the best purchase I've made this year. Apart from the lengthy but not too complicated installation, this is a perfect piece of photo editing software for Digital Photographers and people of a creative nature. I use this program on my Macbook with not to much difficulty at all. It did use a lot of the resources on my laptop when I had a 1G memory but after I upgraded my memory (which was in my plans anyway) to 2G it worked even better. It does say in the box that for optimum use, it needs 1G of memory so don't try running anything else at the same time. I've used CS3 and there are probably 90% of the features on this program. Unless you are a serious professional (e.g. High end sports or nature photographer) then I really would advise you save your money and get this. I'm a semi pro photographer who has sold a quite a few pics and this works perfect! One other slight downside is Adobe's lack of putting a manual in the box. I have bought this manual Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac: The Missing Manual and it is the best manual on the market at a great price! Easy to use, in depth explanations. So if you buy this program then I seriously advise this book too!

complicated, 06 Jul 2008
loads of special effects etc, but it slows your computer down big time, also their semms to be no facility to delete photos & no explanation on how to do it, very complicated.

A great photo editing package for home users - but not an essential upgrade for version 6 users, 05 Sep 2008
Presently on PcPro's `A-List', Adobe Elements is a cut down version of Adobe's £500+ Photoshop/Photoshop Extended CS4, and costs considerably less while still having a lot of useful photo editing capabilities. Photoshop CS4 has a steep learning curve, but Photoshop elements is far more home-user friendly. A lot of the program is geared towards image storage and management of the photos on your hard drive, helping with emailing, web output and scrapbooks of your images. The program can auto-downloads your images from the camera to folders, set up using the date, and can even process the images, say automatically removing red-eye, while it does it. Using stacks you can set up image databases [smart albums] using keywords like names, places, events, etc.., and you can even search using visual tags within the image. That said, I shun the image database options offered by Photoshop Elements and Extended, preferring the simplicity of logical folder names instead. Also, like PhotoShop, the image database side isn't seamlessly integrated into the image editing side [to the point where it's actually annoying].

New to Elements 7 is a new Quick Fix tool to soften surfaces while keeping the edge and detail sharp - i.e. a blur tool, which can help to remove unwanted image noise. Plus there's a new Scene Cleaner tool that can brush away undesirable objects from a photo [so you can ditch that car or tourists from the view] and there's now a Smart Brush which lets you instantly apply effects to a selected area of the image. Plus Element's 7 sports a new single step `whiten teeth', 'make grass greener' and `make the sky blue' tool - but this is little more than streamlining tools within Quick Select and Adjustment Layer Presets that were available on Elements 6. Besides Adobe's suggestion of using the tool to whiten teeth and add a suntan to say Aunt Doris's face may make her look a little ridiculous. Also new in Element's 7 will be a free subscription to Photoshop.com, a special service Adobe has devised to bring friends together by providing quick access to on-line backup, storage, and sharing capabilities. You get 2GB of on-line storage, `enough for up to 1,500 photos', so you can view your photos from virtually anywhere. Thus Photoshop Elements goes `Facebook', allowing you to share your photos `in fun, interactive ways via invitation-only'. For these `Online Albums' you will get new [quite fun] animated templates delivered to Elements on a regular basis. There will also be a Photoshop.com ` Plus' membership offering 20 Gb [15,000 photos] of on-line photo storage, but that will require you paying an annual fee. The first year's 20 Gb subscription is included in Adobe's `Elements 7 Plus' [but not this standard version].

All the old Elements tools are there as well. For editing you have a set of 'quickfix' options or you can load the full image editor for greater manual control: such as adjust sharpness, correct camera distortion, levels, hue and skin colour. Naturally you have standard tools like crop and adjust image size (pixels) as well. You can now do things like brush away wrinkles with the spot healing/healing brush, use clone overlays, make improved B&W images, add image vibrance and clarity, make composite pictures, copy and even blend parts from different images [to say swap faces from a series of photo's so that all your kids are smiling at the camera in one image, i.e. using the PhotoMerge tool]. You also get a layers palette for composites, shapes, text effects and frames. Plus there are step-through guides [guided edit] to help you get there. The software will also integrate with scanners twain interfaces if you are into scanning film, and the Fill Light [shadow/highlight] tool is pretty essential for bringing out detail in shadows from any slide/negative scan. Plus Elements can handle RAW camera images, although I use TIFF/jpg (Elements can save in any common image format).

System requirements are quite high: CD drive, 1Gb system RAM, XP or Vista, 2GHz processor, and a Direct-X 9 graphics card [and Adobe installers can reject systems that don't meet the minimum spec]. Elements 7 perhaps isn't a crucial upgrade from Elements 6 or even 5, but for new home users, or those with older versions, it's very powerful photo editing and image database software from the market leaders. The new 'Scene Cleaner' tool should have been the 'killer app' for those considering upgrading, but it is little more than Elements 6's old PhotoMerge Group application and it requires a series of photos where one has the background free to copy across [and it sometimes gets the exposure wrong making the added bit look rather obvious]. Sadly Adobe's upgrade pricing makes this an expensive option, as typically a full licenced version is only £10 more.

Adobe Elements 7 has only two real competitors at the price: Paint Shop Pro X2 and Serif PhotoPlus X2. Both these programs are also excellent and worthy of consideration, with PhotoPlus's strength being it's about as powerful but rather cheaper to buy and upgrade. Likewise Corel Paint Shop pro X2 occasionally offers a bit more than Elements [layer masks, and curves], is also cheaper and a tad easier to use, although it can be buggy [not Adobe's strong point on first version release either - so install those patches]. Professional users and some SLR enthusiasts will still head towards Adobe's semi-automated PhotoShop Darkroom 2.0 and the fantastically expensive Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended, although even at work we have Adobe Elements on a few imaging workstations for casual users, where the high cost of PhotoShop CS4 Extended simply isn't justified. That said experienced Photoshop CS4 users will rapidly find Elements 7 lacking in a few key features they are used to.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 is also available to buy as a cheaper double pack with the updated Adobe Premiere Elements 7 video editing software, which should be even better value than this upgrade. Plus this double pack qualifies for a large educational discount for non-commercial use if you, or a child in the house, are in full time education [from primary school to college]. Similar large educational discounts apply to much of Adobes software. Those buying for College/School department use will save even more.

An significant upgrade to a great application, 26 Oct 2008
Ideal for anyone with an expensive camera, image management software Photoshop darkroom 1.0 was a great image editing and processing application. Now Lightroom 2.0 has arrived. Lightroom is kind of a batch processing application where it uploads photos from your camera card, tags and sorts them, and then allows image editing [cropping, enhancement, optimisation] before exporting them to disk, printer or web/email. It has a powerful set of editing tools built in and almost removes the need for a separate image editor like Photoshop CS4. You can download a 30 day trial from Adobe to see if it meets your requirements or whether budget consumer Adobe Photoshop Elements 7.0 or the fantastically expensive Adobe PhotoShop CS4 is more suitable for your needs. Lightroom 2.0 does even integrate into PhotoShop CS4 if you are lucky enough to own it. Lightroom 2.0 is an ideal application if you have to shoot loads of photos one minute and pass them on to visitors the next, or you simply want to minimise image editing time on the PC and get out there again with your camera.

The only downside is that the full version price of Lightroom 2.0 has jumped up to £230, although this makes the far cheaper upgrade price seem better value if you already own Lightroom 1.0, particularly as this is a worthwhile upgrade. The most obvious change in Lightroom 2.0 are dual monitor support, more options for localized image processing/editing, an ability to take 3rd-party plug-ins, better 'removable drive' handling and the 'smart collections' image database tool. Be warned though the application layout has changed and you need Adobe's latest update patches and a fast multi-core Intel graphics workstation PC to get Darkroom running smoothly [which I have]. Plus I don't care for the trendy charcoal gray interface, text has been black on white since the written word was invented millennia ago for a good reason, and classic XP/Vista window colour schemes and layout are simply more practical during use. It does help you concentrate on the image though I suppose, and it recreates that vintage darkroom feel [where you can't see squat else]. Still that's a minor quibble given the merits of the application. School kids, college students and departments will qualify for significant educational discounts on all Adobe's software, so check these out if that includes you. Visit Adobe for further details of the software & educational discounts.

PC system requirements are a Pentium 4, XP or Vista Premium, 1Gb system RAM, 1GB hard-disk space and a 1,024x768 display. The fact that AMD processors aren't mentioned might be significant. Adobe installers often reject any PC that falls below the minimum spec, plus 4Gb system memory and a fast graphics card will certainly speed things up. To quote Adobe: "The new Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 is the serious photographer's essential toolbox, providing one easy application for managing, adjusting, and presenting large volumes of digital photographs so you can spend less time in front of the computer and more time behind the lens."

An significant upgrade to a great application, 28 Oct 2008
Ideal for anyone with an expensive camera, image management software Photoshop darkroom 1.0 was a great image editing and processing application. Now Lightroom 2.0 has arrived. Lightroom is kind of a batch processing application where it uploads photos from your camera card, tags and sorts them, and then allows image editing [cropping, enhancement, optimisation] before exporting them to disk, printer or web/email. It has a powerful set of editing tools built in and almost removes the need for a separate image editor like Photoshop CS4. You can download a 30 day trial from Adobe to see if it meets your requirements or whether budget consumer Adobe Photoshop Elements 7.0 or the fantastically expensive Adobe PhotoShop CS4 is more suitable for your needs. Lightroom 2.0 does even integrate into PhotoShop CS4 if you are lucky enough to own it. Lightroom 2.0 is an ideal application if you have to shoot loads of photos one minute and pass them on to visitors the next, or you simply want to minimise image editing time on the PC and get out there again with your camera.

The only downside is that the full version price of Lightroom 2.0 has jumped up to £230, although this makes the far cheaper upgrade price seem better value if you already own Lightroom 1.0, particularly as this is a worthwhile upgrade. The most obvious change in Lightroom 2.0 are dual monitor support, more options for localized image processing/editing, an ability to take 3rd-party plug-ins, better 'removable drive' handling and the 'smart collections' image database tool. Be warned though the application layout has changed and you need Adobe's latest update patches and a fast multi-core Intel graphics workstation PC to get Darkroom running smoothly [which I have]. Plus I don't care for the trendy charcoal gray interface, text has been black on white since the written word was invented millennia ago for a good reason, and classic XP/Vista window colour schemes and layout are simply more practical during use. It does help you concentrate on the image though I suppose, and it recreates that vintage darkroom feel [where you can't see squat else]. Still that's a minor quibble given the merits of the application. School kids, college students and departments will qualify for significant educational discounts on all Adobe's software, so check these out if that includes you. Visit Adobe for further details of the software & educational discounts.

PC system requirements are a Pentium 4, XP or Vista Premium, 1Gb system RAM, 1GB hard-disk space and a 1,024x768 display. The fact that AMD processors aren't mentioned might well be significant. Adobe installers often reject any PC that falls below the minimum spec, plus 4Gb system memory and a fast graphics card will certainly speed things up. To quote Adobe: "The new Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 is the serious photographer's essential toolbox, providing one easy application for managing, adjusting, and presenting large volumes of digital photographs so you can spend less time in front of the computer and more time behind the lens."

Perfect work-flow tool, 23 Oct 2008
Running on WinXP (2gb mem, 3.2GHz CPU), yes it can be slow at times, this has been acknowledged by Adobe, performance should be addressed in the next patch 2.1. So suggest if you're thinking about buying this, see what patches have happened since these reviews.

I haven't used LR 1.4 unlike other reviewers, so can only comment based on LR2; for those users who prefer to spend time behind the camera and not a PC, this is the app. Easy to use workflow tool with many features, good selection of image enhancement tools, the Grad Filters are superb, allows open-source plugins (for example plugin tools available to auto upload images to your favourite online sites etc).

For the money I would liked to have seen some paper documentation with this, as a minimum a quick start guide offering hints & tips on how to best organise you images should be included. I've already setup catalogues and stored images that I know I could have distributed better now I've been using LR for a few weeks now.

As a neutral who was looking for an application that would allow me to swiftly process 400+ RAW shots with minor tweaking (batch adjust white balance, cropping, saturation, sharpening etc) I have found this fits the bill. Other than Aperture (only for the Apple), there is no alternative work-flow tool as good at the moment.

I think Lightroom 2 is wonderful, 15 Sep 2008
I'm sure I agree with some of the comments already posted on this product, such as relocation of some of the tools (which is annoying for the first 30 mins unti you get used to it), but the improvements are well worth the upgrade. I didn't notice some of the missing features of earlier versions so I'm not sure I'd used them that much - you may or may not yourself.

It can b