Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0

The interface and tool bars are also much improved. While I always felt that LE was simple to use for basic editing, many of the more advanced filters and layers could be somewhat difficult for the novice to figure out. Elements 2.0 has made these advanced features much more usable with the excellent tutorial and Recipes feature. With the Recipe feature users are walked through features that would have been daunting even to intermediate users.

Stability and responsiveness has been been very good on my machine. Thus far, Elements 2.0 seems almost as stable as OSX itself (in the year and a half I've been using OSX it (the OS) has NEVER crashed-hard to believe, but true). Elements does take longer to launch then LE, but with all the extra features, that's to be expected. I have been having some problems importing images from my digital camera, but I don't know if that's Adobe's fault, or Olympus', and is the only reason I give it four instead of five stars.

Over all, Photoshop Elements 2.0 is an outstanding product. Not only does it have far more features then Photoshop LE, Adobe almost makes these features more accessible and easier to use. And, last and more importantly, it runs great in OSX.

The website has no support.

Camera software is better. Don't waste your money.

For me, the three key considerations are 1) Powerful image editing tools, 2) Ease of use, and 3) The learning curve.

POWERFUL IMAGE EDITING TOOLS?
Elements2 has multiple tools and techniques to accomplish any image-editing task.

Cropping, rotating and changing perspective is easy. Changing perspective is useful to "straighten out" vertical lines of buildings when the picture is shot with a wide-angle lens. If the horizon in the picture is slightly off, don't worry. There's a technique (window-info command) to measure the angle of the horizon to a fraction of a degree to determine how much to rotate the picture to make the horizon "perfectly level".

The "red eye" correction tool is elegantly simple and yet very precise.

Lighting can be adjusted with levels, contrast, brightness and layers commands. Fill flash and studio lighting (filter-render-lighting effects command) can be added to the photo to correct for poor scene lighting when the picture was taken.

Color correction and adjustment couldn't be faster or easier; it's all done with a few mouse clicks. One mouse click can eliminate a color cast. The "color variations" command lets you change colors of midtones, highlights, and shadows and adjust saturation and brightness while viewing thumbnail previews of the potential adjustments. And there's a slick "replace color" command to change part or all of the image.

At some point in image editing, you want to adjust part of the image, not the entire image. Selection tools make this possible. Elements2 has the best selection tools I've seen. All of the selection tools work together making it fast and easy to select a part of the image with "surgical precision". Most competitive programs either make you work to make selections or they lack precision. Elements2 takes the work out of the selection process.

I believe selection tools and layers are the key to serious image editing. Elements2 has the best selection tools and an excellent set of tools to work with layers. It's simply the best software for serious image editing. Professionals will probably opt for the more sophisticated Adobe Photoshop software, but Elements2 is everything I need.

Most competitive image editing software does not provide color management tools. But Elements2 includes Adobe Gamma software to adjust your monitor so that your printer can faithfully produce the colors you see on the screen. You have to e-mail Hewlett Packard to learn how to set your printer configuration. Once you've done that, Elements2 gives you several choices in the "print preview" command to fine tune color management of printed output.

EASE OF USE?
Adobe's software engineers did their homework. They have tamed power by making almost every image editing task possible by a few mouse clicks. The "quick fix" command is elegantly simple and yet it provides a wide range of adjustments to photos. Once you have used a command it is easy to remember. The user interface is simple.

THE LEARNING CURVE?
How long does it take for a novice to learn the program? I viewed the tutorials from the Elements2 welcome screen and reviewed the manual. The tutorials were too simplistic. They taught just one thing to a novice who needs a perspective for this software. The Elements2 manual is "dry" reading, like a dictionary. The manual is not really a tutorial, it's more of a reference assuming you already know the basics of how to use the program.

What's the novice to do??? A good way to learn new software is a book. I read "Photoshop Elements2 - Zero To Hero". It is written in a narrative, easy to read form with lots of examples. Within a few hours with the book, I became comfortable with Elements2 and found that I could use the new software easily.

If I had not bought a book, I probably would have complained that this software is hard to use. In my opinion, novices can't figure out how to use Elements2 if they limit learning to what Adobe supplies with the software.

Do yourself a favor; buy a book written in a narrative format. Spend a few hours with the book. You'll gain a perspective for the program and how to use it. Once you have that, you can use the Element2 manual as a reference to learn about some specific aspect of the program. Also, you can use the recipes and hints that Adobe includes in Elements2.

BOTTOM LINE
Photoshop Elements2 = SIMPLY THE BEST FOR SERIOUS IMAGE EDITING.