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Photoshop vs Photoshop Elements

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Dennis Phillips

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The price difference between Photoshop (designed for professionals) and Photoshop Elements (downsized for amateurs) is enormous -- in the order of USD $600 versus USD $90. Is the functional difference that great?

After spending so much money on my new D7Hi (plus forum-recommended extras -- my thanks to the members of this forum for their excellent advice), will I be short-changing myself by settling for Elements? The PC Tools forum didn't have a discussion on the differences between the two programs.

A likely question is what do I want to do with the software. I don't plan on selling my photos, but I am an obsessive amateur. And I'd sure like to impress my wife with exceptional output in return for her having agreed to let me buy the camera in the first place.

May I restate the question -- is Elements a useful program or is it bait-and-switch software designed to whet the appetite for the mega-program? Or should I stick with my aged version of CorelDraw? I've downloaded the demos, but I'd sure appreciate the voices of experience.
 
Due to the large cost differential, I too am using PhotoShop Elements 1. I use it almost exclusively now (on occassions I fire up my old version of Corel PhotoPaint9...but rarely).

Here's a great link to check out...

http://hiddenelements.com/

I purchased the "The Hidden Power of Photoshop Elements 2" book, have installed the software, and can do quite a bit now with PSE1. Definitely well worth the investment if you get PSE.

I've used a demo version of Photoshop6, and find that I'm happy with PSE1 with the above "add on".

--
Mark Pernal
Lk Mary, FL
http://www.photosig.com/go/users/view?id=21985
 
Dennis Phillips said:
The price difference between Photoshop (designed for professionals)
and Photoshop Elements (downsized for amateurs) is enormous -- in
the order of USD $600 versus USD $90. Is the functional difference
that great?

After spending so much money on my new D7Hi (plus forum-recommended
extras -- my thanks to the members of this forum for their
excellent advice), will I be short-changing myself by settling for
Elements? The PC Tools forum didn't have a discussion on the
differences between the two programs.

A likely question is what do I want to do with the software. I
don't plan on selling my photos, but I am an obsessive amateur. And
I'd sure like to impress my wife with exceptional output in return
for her having agreed to let me buy the camera in the first place.

May I restate the question -- is Elements a useful program or is it
bait-and-switch software designed to whet the appetite for the
mega-program? Or should I stick with my aged version of CorelDraw?
I've downloaded the demos, but I'd sure appreciate the voices of
experience.
Click to expand...
--
JC

While I can't answer your question on Photoshop vs Elements, I can offer some advise. First, it sound like we have very similar interests when it come to output (the whole reason for getting the camera in the first place). I have Elements ver 2 (Sams Club $50), and an older version of Corel Draw / Corel Paint. While I occasionally find a need for Paint or Picture Publisher (i.e. producing CMYK output, which Elements will not do), I think Elements is the way to go.

It is very powerful, supports full use of layers, and prepares one for future migration to the full blown Photoshop since the interface and commands are so similar. Additionally, there are many great books which help to accelerate the learning curve (even Elements has a rather steep curve at first).

Some of the books do a great job of getting you from "before to after." Many of the more professional techniques can be accomplished with Elements, but the manual leaves you clueless on how to get the results. (That you didn't even know you could do - like softening the facial features on a portrait while keeping the hair, eyes and everything else super sharp).

Other programs/items that I highly recommend are:

Photoshop Album (a must have - integrates nicely with Elements - on sale this week at Circuit City for $30). Use it with the card reader below for "mindless" uploading of your pics. It is awesome! It organizes by date, tags or upload date. It creates new directories for each upload, and prevents dupes if you haven't yet deleted previously uploaded pics from the card. It also automatically keeps your original file intact after editing; allows you to see original, before and after; and much more. The feature where you can post your pics on the walls of a 3D museum / cathedral, etc., and then post to your website is pretty cool.

QImage (nice for getting the most efficient use of your photo paper) - I haven't noticed any real output quality benefit yet, but I'm rather new to using it.

A USB 2.0 card reader is a must! Makes uploading pics to Album quick and painless. I have the Kodak 6 in 1 (Walmart for $25).
 
I use PS 7 and while I have never done anything with elements, a professional photographer friend does use Elements. Based on our discussions, there is a wold of differences. I am able to do many things that he can not do or is more difficult to do in Elements. If you can find someone that wants to sell an old version of PS, you can buy the upgrade to PS7 for about $250. This is money that is very well spent.

rw
http://www.Tranquility-Art.com
Dennis Phillips said:
The price difference between Photoshop (designed for professionals)
and Photoshop Elements (downsized for amateurs) is enormous -- in
the order of USD $600 versus USD $90. Is the functional difference
that great?
Click to expand...
 
R. Williams said:
rw
http://www.Tranquility-Art.com
Dennis Phillips said:
The price difference between Photoshop (designed for professionals)
and Photoshop Elements (downsized for amateurs) is enormous -- in
the order of USD $600 versus USD $90. Is the functional difference
that great?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Dennis,

I have both Adobe Photoshop Elements 1 and the upgrade, 2. Thanks to some input from Daniella, I purchased The Hidden Power of Elements 2. I can highly recommend both Elements 2 and the above referenced Tutorial book/CD. It is awesome, and walks you through the various processes. This is far better than reading something, and then trying to figure out how to do it. The CD that comes with the book, in addition to uploading photos on to your system for use with the Tutorial, also adds many new tools to Photoshop Elements 2, thereby making it a more powerful and versatile program. Also, the expense for Elements 2 and the Tutorial is considerably less than Photoshop 7.
Hope this helps.

Michael
 
I have Elements 2 and it is very good and very versatile. It will do all you are likely to need. My Father-in-Law has used photoshop 5,6 and 7 extensively but now uses elements preferentially for most things. It does 80% of what photoshop does and unless you are a dedicated graphic artist it is likely to do all you need.
Mike Gallagher said:
R. Williams said:
rw
http://www.Tranquility-Art.com
Dennis Phillips said:
The price difference between Photoshop (designed for professionals)
and Photoshop Elements (downsized for amateurs) is enormous -- in
the order of USD $600 versus USD $90. Is the functional difference
that great?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Dennis,

I have both Adobe Photoshop Elements 1 and the upgrade, 2. Thanks
to some input from Daniella, I purchased The Hidden Power of
Elements 2. I can highly recommend both Elements 2 and the above
referenced Tutorial book/CD. It is awesome, and walks you through
the various processes. This is far better than reading something,
and then trying to figure out how to do it. The CD that comes with
the book, in addition to uploading photos on to your system for use
with the Tutorial, also adds many new tools to Photoshop Elements
2, thereby making it a more powerful and versatile program. Also,
the expense for Elements 2 and the Tutorial is considerably less
than Photoshop 7.
Hope this helps.

Michael
Click to expand...
 
The full photoshop support action but Element does not support it. There are some minor differences but basicaly it's not worth the 510$ more.

You can probably find both version free on the internet and try them both and see if it is worth to buy the full version.
Dennis Phillips said:
The price difference between Photoshop (designed for professionals)
and Photoshop Elements (downsized for amateurs) is enormous -- in
the order of USD $600 versus USD $90. Is the functional difference
that great?

After spending so much money on my new D7Hi (plus forum-recommended
extras -- my thanks to the members of this forum for their
excellent advice), will I be short-changing myself by settling for
Elements? The PC Tools forum didn't have a discussion on the
differences between the two programs.

A likely question is what do I want to do with the software. I
don't plan on selling my photos, but I am an obsessive amateur. And
I'd sure like to impress my wife with exceptional output in return
for her having agreed to let me buy the camera in the first place.

May I restate the question -- is Elements a useful program or is it
bait-and-switch software designed to whet the appetite for the
mega-program? Or should I stick with my aged version of CorelDraw?
I've downloaded the demos, but I'd sure appreciate the voices of
experience.
Click to expand...
--
Daniella
http://www.photosig.com/go/users/userphotos?id=26918
http://www.pbase.com/zylen
C7OO FORUM: http://www.c700uz.com

c7OOuz, Dimage-7, Tcon14tele, C210tele, Cokin-173, Grad-ND, Hoya-red-Intensifier, Hoya_R_72.
 
R. Williams said:
I use PS 7 and while I have never done anything with elements, a
professional photographer friend does use Elements. Based on our
discussions, there is a wold of differences. I am able to do many
things that he can not do or is more difficult to do in Elements.
If you can find someone that wants to sell an old version of PS,
you can buy the upgrade to PS7 for about $250. This is money that
is very well spent.
Click to expand...
beside actions...can you mention some of these "many things" that element cannot do?

You cannot buy an old version of PS if the owner has already upgrade it. If you buy PS 6 from someone who has bought the upgrade for it and has PS7, you will not be able to use it for upgrade. When you buy a used software, it is not always possible to transfer the license. I could not sell my 3dsMax (4,500.$) software because the license could not be transfered. Now I am not sure about the Adobe policy about that.
R. Williams said:
rw
http://www.Tranquility-Art.com
Dennis Phillips said:
The price difference between Photoshop (designed for professionals)
and Photoshop Elements (downsized for amateurs) is enormous -- in
the order of USD $600 versus USD $90. Is the functional difference
that great?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
--
Daniella
http://www.photosig.com/go/users/userphotos?id=26918
http://www.pbase.com/zylen
C7OO FORUM: http://www.c700uz.com

c7OOuz, Dimage-7, Tcon14tele, C210tele, Cokin-173, Grad-ND, Hoya-red-Intensifier, Hoya_R_72.
 
Check out http://www.hiddenelements.com before you decide what Elements can or cannot do. There are many tools that can be added (some with the book, like curves) and some are free (like layer masks). You can also download the trial version of Elements. This will give you 30 days to try it and see. I have been running elements for about a year now. Love it. The thing that nobody mentions is that Elements can ACTUALLY do one thing that PS 7 cannot. Photomerge. It can create panoramas.
 
Janet Hughes said:
Check out http://www.hiddenelements.com before you decide what Elements
can or cannot do. There are many tools that can be added (some
with the book, like curves) and some are free (like layer masks).
You can also download the trial version of Elements. This will
give you 30 days to try it and see. I have been running elements
for about a year now. Love it. The thing that nobody mentions is
that Elements can ACTUALLY do one thing that PS 7 cannot.
Photomerge. It can create panoramas.
Click to expand...
I have PSE2 and the "HIdden Power of Elements" book, and there really isn't much that can't be done with the software. The real difference is that PSE simply doesn't support 48-bit (16 bits per channel) image editing - but then most output devices are only 24-bit (8 bits per channel) anyway. And could you really "see" a difference with more than 16 million colors? By way of audio analogy, it's somewhat like asking whether you can tell the difference between a high quality MP3 and the original CD recording. And it's true that PSE does panos whle PS does not (although I predict Photomerge will appear in a future release of PS). I happened to get a screamin' deal ($30 for PSE2), as both Amazon and Adobe were offering rebates. f you can find a deal like that, all the better; but it's worth the regular price of $80.

---
Steve
 
Daniella said:
The full photoshop support action but Element does not support it.
There are some minor differences but basicaly it's not worth the
510$ more.
Click to expand...
I'll have to disagree with that statement. Here are some things that PS does that PSE doesn't:

1) Actions. These are multiple-command sequences that can be recorded and edited - you can even have dialogs in them!

2) Curves. If you know what curves are, you know that they're worth pretty much whatever they cost if you want to do serious image editing.

3) Alpha channels.

4) IIRC, PSE has a half-baked CMYK mode, and doesn't support Lab mode at all.

5) Supports a much wider variety of plug-ins.

Now that I've said that, I will say that I really like PSE, I have users who use it for serious work, and there's nothing wrong with it. It's a lot easier to use than PS and it has a few tools for the amateur photographer that PS doesn't. (You can't do anything with PSE that you can't do with PS, but PSE has some automated features PS doesn't.) I would urge anybody new to the world of digital image work to use it. If, later, you decide you want the full pull, you can upgrade to PS.

MW
 
Marc Whipple said:
I'll have to disagree with that statement. Here are some things
that PS does that PSE doesn't:

1) Actions. These are multiple-command sequences that can be
recorded and edited - you can even have dialogs in them!
Click to expand...
You can play actions in PSE with the use of a plugin, but you can't record actions.
Marc Whipple said:
2) Curves. If you know what curves are, you know that they're worth
pretty much whatever they cost if you want to do serious image
editing.
Click to expand...
As pointed out, the "Hidden Power" book and CD contain enhancements for PSE, and curves is one of them. I use them all the time in PSE to make image adjustments. The only thing about it is that once you commit the change made via the curves dialog, you can't edit it. This hasn't been an issue at all for me though. Rarely do I have to tweak the curves adjustment, and if I think I might need to, I can just re-apply or keep a copy of the adjusted layer (usually a luminosity separation) around for further adjustments.
Marc Whipple said:
3) Alpha channels.
Click to expand...
You can load and save selections with feathering (gray scale) in them - which is basically what an alpha channel is. The only thing is that you can't "see" the alpha channel content - just the selection marquee. Again, this hasn't been an issue for me.
Marc Whipple said:
4) IIRC, PSE has a half-baked CMYK mode, and doesn't support Lab
mode at all.
Click to expand...
There is a work-around for creating CMYK files using PSE if you really need that capability. I've personally never needed it. As for Lab mode, I do luminosity separations all the time - critical when making tonal adjustments. Again the Hidden Elements additions automate this separation process, allowing you to manipulate color separately from luminosity.
Marc Whipple said:
5) Supports a much wider variety of plug-ins.
Click to expand...
Probably true, but how many plug-ins does one really need/use? There are many which work with either PS or PSE anyway.

---
Steve
 
Marc Whipple said:
1) Actions. These are multiple-command sequences that can be
recorded and edited - you can even have dialogs in them!
Click to expand...
Elements can play them back in several ways including the free interface available here: http://hiddenelements.com/freetools.html
Marc Whipple said:
2) Curves. If you know what curves are, you know that they're worth
pretty much whatever they cost if you want to do serious image
editing.
Click to expand...
Can be had in the tools included with the book The Hidden Power of Photoshop Elements: http://hiddenelements.com/
Marc Whipple said:
3) Alpha channels.
Click to expand...
ditto
Marc Whipple said:
4) IIRC, PSE has a half-baked CMYK mode, and doesn't support Lab
mode at all.
Click to expand...
It doesn't support Lab, but you can separate color and tone and work with it much like you would with LAB, you just need to know the techniques! I don't know what you mean by 'half baked' as there is NO CMYK mode. However, you can separate CMYK information and create valid EPS files manually. Again, in the Hidden Elements book.
Marc Whipple said:
5) Supports a much wider variety of plug-ins.
Click to expand...
What on earth do you need plugins for in Photoshop? If you learn to use the tools already in the program properly, you are tossing your dollars down a big-ol' drain for most plugins I've seen. I've yet to find one more useful than tools I access right in Photoshop and Elements...and certainly none that I'd want to spend 300$+ on. I am sure I can mimick any one of them in Elements.
Marc Whipple said:
Now that I've said that, I will say that I really like PSE, I
have users who use it for serious work, and there's nothing wrong
with it. It's a lot easier to use than PS and it has a few tools
for the amateur photographer that PS doesn't. (You can't do
anything with PSE that you can't do with PS, but PSE has some
automated features PS doesn't.)
Click to expand...
And I really like PS, but not everyone needs it. You have to want to record actions, use Image Ready, work with volume CMYK images, and 16 bit editing.

Regretfully lots of people poo-poo Elements and suggest to a lot of people they get PS when it is simply unnecessary. Elements CAN handle 95% of what most users do -- especially with images from a digital camera. $500 could but an additional monitor, scanner, input, RAM upgrade...all of which may be more valuable than having access to something like the Extract tool (which, BTW, CAN be mimicked in Elements).

Don't sell Elements short...worth the $55 (see amazon):

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00006ANW9/newwriting

--
Richard Lynch
[email protected]
http://hiddenelements.com
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0782141781/newwriting/
 
I'm only a rank amateur, but from my personal perspective the feature I like most in PS that is not in elements is Extract. Extract is a masking type tool that gives one a prayer of being able to extract a complicated image (such as hair) from a real world background where you did not have the foresight to shoot against a blue screen. For everything else I do PS Elements would do just fine.

It almost pays to take a class and be eligible for the steep academic discounts.
 
Dennis Phillips said:
The price difference between Photoshop (designed for professionals)
and Photoshop Elements (downsized for amateurs) is enormous -- in
the order of USD $600 versus USD $90. Is the functional difference
that great?

After spending so much money on my new D7Hi (plus forum-recommended
extras -- my thanks to the members of this forum for their
excellent advice), will I be short-changing myself by settling for
Elements? The PC Tools forum didn't have a discussion on the
differences between the two programs.

A likely question is what do I want to do with the software. I
don't plan on selling my photos, but I am an obsessive amateur. And
I'd sure like to impress my wife with exceptional output in return
for her having agreed to let me buy the camera in the first place.

May I restate the question -- is Elements a useful program or is it
bait-and-switch software designed to whet the appetite for the
mega-program? Or should I stick with my aged version of CorelDraw?
I've downloaded the demos, but I'd sure appreciate the voices of
experience.
Click to expand...
Hi Dennis,

I used Photoshop6 before having a camera and even did the step to PS7. It is true that it is a great program but your camera alows you so many nice settings itself that I don't think it is nessecairy to spend so much money. At least not as long you don't think manipulating your photographs or even creating graphocs from the scratch. If you are looking for a very complet program without spending any money at all, try "The Gimp" It is totally free.
--
Regards, Rainer
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/rainer.pawellek
http://www.pbase.com/rainerp
http://rain1man.deviantart.com/store/
 
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