CompleteMartialArts.com - Adobe Photoshop Elements 7
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List Price: $99.99
Our Price: $64.99
Your Save: $ 35.00 ( 35% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Adobe
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: CD-ROM
Brand: Adobe
EAN: 0883919168296
Feature: Stay connected with your favorite people and memories with new Photoshop.com membership
Format: CD-ROM
Is Autographed: 0
Is Memorabilia: 0
Label: Adobe
Manufacturer: Adobe
Model: 65026616
Platform: Windows XP
Publisher: Adobe
Release Date: 2008-10-13
Studio: Adobe
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Features
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Stay connected with your favorite people and memories with new Photoshop.com membership
Make ordinary photos extraordinary with easy-to-use editing tools
Share your stories in beautiful, personalized creations for print and web
Easily find and view all your photos
Share your photos in fun, interactive ways with invitation-only Online Albums
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Editorial Reviews:
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Make ordinary photos extraordinary with Adobe Photoshop Elements 7. It combines power and simplicity so you can tell engaging stories in beautiful, personalized creations for print and the web; and easily find and view all your photos. And now, extend the capabilities of your software with new Photoshop.com Plus membership (Annual membership terms apply).
Create a personal web travelogue for friends and family, or view and share your photos on an interactive map based on the locations where they were taken (Works with U.S. addresses only) Online Albums with your choice of dynamic, animated templates With Photoshop.com Plus membership (Annual membership terms apply), you can - Show off your creativity with inspiring ideas, tutorials, seasonal artwork, and templates delivered regularly to your software Backup your memories automatically and no scheduling required? get 20GB of storage ? enough for up to 15,000 photos View your photos virtually anywhere you are Share photos in fun, interactive ways via invitation-only Online Albums ? and you'll get new templates delivered to your software on a regular basis
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Photoshop 7
Comment: The Photoshop 7 was recommended to me. I like the Photoshop, especially when it doesn't open each time I open pictures. It willo take some time for me to learn most of the options but for organizing and correcting it has worked very well.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Useful...Good Value...But Not The One To Count On
Comment: I'm not too interested in having my software as "web-enabled" as PSE7 is. I'm fully aware of several places to upload and share my photos if I was to care to, and I don't.
When you start up PSE7, you begin at the photo sharing login screen that takes time to load, then I choose "Edit", and it takes another forever to load the editing window. I find the photo sharing part exceedingly distracting. The rest of PSE7 is fairly decent.
I've got to give Adobe some credit for the "organize" part of the software, which I find quite versatile and very simple to use. It's easy on the eyes too. You can organize by category, by rating, by date or you can search text that may appear either in image titles or information natively embedded within or attached to the file. It's well done.
The editor is fairly impressive, yet lacking at the same time. The responsiveness and optimization of the underlying routines of the tools are great but there seems to be just enough left out of the program to leave you wanting more (Photoshop). There are text type masks, but I've found no mask layers, for example.
PSE7 is ideal for the person who makes wreaths and sews and stuff in the craft room. One who takes crafting seriously would love PSE7 and its many project templates, its impressive, perhaps even unmatched number of included effects and plug-in filters, and its feature set.
If you're the serious pixel mover and you don't care about all the frilly craft things, and consistent workflow is important to you, you might not be as impressed as you might expect. I find loading multiple programs to act as windows [organize and edit], and being reminded to sign up for photo sharing services very counterproductive.
My aging [Fujitsu N3010] laptop runs much hotter after having installed this program.
I do recommend PSE7 as an additional tool in your digital arsenal if you don't mind plunking down the cash, but don't get your hopes up too high if you're considering it as your primary tool unless you make use of all of the specific creative conveniences that this program provides.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Adobe quality with clunky user interface
Comment: Adobe Photoshop Elements 7
OS Environments evaluated: XP Pro / Home SP-2 and Vista Home Premium SP-1
This was my first time using Adobe Photoshop Elements and I was intrigued because I have heard so much about Adobe Photoshop in the past. I was not entirely sure what Elements was comprised of other than the tidbits I picked up off Wikipedia and other web resources. My previous experience with raster image software (basically simple programs to edit/crop/adjust images) had been with MS Paint, Office Image Editor, Paint Shop Pro, and even the open-source program GIMP. They are all generally the same because they offer layers, different selection tools, color and brightness/gamma adjustments, and resize algorithms. The biggest differences are in load times, application size, resource usage, interface usability, and overall speed.
The system requirements include Windows XP SP-2 or SP-3, or Vista with at least 1GB of RAM, 2GHz or faster processor, and at least 1.5GB of hard drive space. Of course, if you are going to be working many photos, then you will want a much larger hard drive especially with 1 TB (terabyte) drives dropping in price!
Some of the new features advertised on the box are a scene cleaner where you can use multiple shots of the same scene to create a composite image, eliminating crowds or other elements that you want to remove. The same theory applies to the group shot feature and panorama. The problem with this is you must take multiple images and there is no easy way to determine if you took enough photos from the right angle to get the images to lineup. It is an interesting tool, but unless you are using a tripod in a relatively controlled environment, the final product is not going to be as clean.
The more interesting features were the teeth whitener and bluer sky touchup filters. In the past, I simply created a selection on teeth and adjusted the brightness, contrast, or gamma to create the right shade of white appropriate for the photo. I wanted to give Adobe's built-in functions a try, but I found Photoshop Element 7's teeth whitener to be extremely clunky as it kept creating a larger selection rather than increase the whiteness. The user must select "New Selection" to increase the whiteness each time. Locating this tool was already a pain, as I had to consult the help, except F1 just activates your web browser and takes you to Adobe's website. After I quizzed the query box about whitening teeth and wasting 15 minutes trying to find a dodge tool, I discovered that the help site also links regular Photoshop content with Photoshop elements. I also found out there is no dodge tool in Photoshop Elements. Eventually I did find the teeth whitener, blue sky, and some other touch up tools located under Quick Fixes -> Touch Up.
The opening screen for Photoshop Elements reeks of a simple idiot-proof program as it allows you to Share, Create, Edit, or Organize. The option to create an account at [...] and signing-in is very annoying. It is very simple and cumbersome at the same time, since if you choose one option and decide to do something else, it requires more menu navigation. Bottom line is that it overcomplicates something simple by making it appear simple, sort of like Windows Vista and its Aero interface. What Adobe should have done is use a simple screen asking if the user wants to use a wizard or the base program and to remember this selection in the future.
My biggest gripe with Photoshop Elements is how clunky the user interface is and how it does not allow the use of the scroll wheel for zooming. In almost any web app (Google Maps) or application, the scroll wheel defaults as a zoom tool for convenience. It is either that, or the user can hold Ctrl and use the wheel as zoom. Neither of these commonly used options works in Photoshop Elements. The user must use the magnifying glass tool to "Zoom In" or "Zoom Out." It is extremely awkward, clunky, and inefficient.
Not all is lost as I found that Photoshop Elements offers an extremely flexible print interface. The options are extremely flexible (choosing scaling, centering, etc...) with real-time feedback and direct scaling of the photo with the mouse. Every application should allow this, including Acrobat and Microsoft Applications. I find it disheartening that many modern applications, such as IE7, FireFox, and even Acrobat 9 do not allow direct scaling of documents ready for print. Many web pages use obscure coding or framing to make them feel "unique" but produce the worst printouts (empty pages or frames that cut into half the document). Paint Shop applications often allow some degree of tweaking during a print-preview session but do not offer the same flexibility and real-time feedback as Photoshop Elements.
Pros: Decent load times on modern laptops and PCs, flexible print-preview and direct scaling of photographs prior to print outs, has all of the basic features an average photo enthusiast needs without the full cost of Photoshop.
Cons: The zoom feature should have been linked to the scroll wheel for easier zooming while performing other tasks. Many of the touchup tools are "hidden" away and requires some time to locate them. The usability of Photoshop Elements 7 needs improvement.
Overall: There are many options in the basic to intermediate level raster/vector photoshop app market, even some that are very robust and free like GIMP. I do like the Adobe interface but it is often difficult to do the simplest tasks because the user has to find the right button or find the right menu that has the button. Power users would not like Photoshop Elements since it lacks many of the professional level tools from the regular Photoshop CS3-CS4. However, Photoshop Elements costs 1/10 that of CS3 or CS4, which is astounding since I feel it is still quite expensive for the simple features it offers. I would recommend looking at open-source alternatives such as GIMP or less expensive but more popular options like Paintshop Pro (before Corel bought out Jasc in 2004).
Customer Rating:
Summary: A very powerful photo editing and management tool, but it is not for everyone
Comment: This is a review of Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 (PSE7) - so this review should not be applied to other versions or other bundles.
If you are new to photography, and are looking for a first time editing tool, to manage, edit, and enhance photographs, this might be too much for you, unless you are willing to learn it. There are products with less features, some online versions are actually free, that might be just what you need to get started as they do all the basic things that most people will use. In time however, you will need this product or something like it. I caution you to just start with this one, as it's complicated, and powerful, and sometimes not as intuitive as one would like.
If you are upgrading from a prior version of Photoshop Elements, then I'm not sure that this version is worth it for you. Yes, there are some new capabilities, but a lot of the changes are just changes... some for the better, some for worse, and some are just different - and if you really got good with a prior version, this version will bring with it a learning curve that you will not be real happy with. I was pretty good with Photoshop Elements 4, and the jump to 7 was a shock. I like the new capabilities, but I do NOT like the learning curve, and it is a big change. The good news is that you don't have to un-install the prior version(s) to run PSE7. You can't run PSE7 and the older version at the same time, but keeping both versions on my PC has been helpful for some things I was just really good at using the old version (PSE4 in my case).
If you have been using one of the free photograph editing tools, or a really old product, or a scaled down version that came with your PC, then I recommend this product to you! You don't need to spend hundreds for the full blown professional tools from Adobe (such as Adobe Photoshop CS3 or Adobe Photoshop CS4). PSE7 will do all and more than you will probably need. The marketing materials on Amazon describe this product in general - but believe me, it can do many many more things and with numerous embedded tools, filters, techniques, that no single review could ever hope to document. There are college level classes that teach Photoshop (sure, many are geared at the professional version, but most of the techniques apply to this version too).
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not for professionals, good for a novice...but worth an upgrade?
Comment: If you already own the previous version of this software (6), then stop reading here and just take a look at what all the other reviewers are saying. You will be hard-pressed to justify an upgrade here. But Adobe remains, as always, a reliable software maker in the field of digital image editing. This is not something that professional users will seek out but more suitable for novices and intermediates like myself. It will do all the things that users with that experience level will want it to do, such as turning your photos into 'pencil sketches' or turning multi-images into a panoramic shot seamlessly. This is a reasonably inexpensive package but you may just be better off picking up a cheaper copy of the previous version. The big draw for picking up this newest edition might be the free [...] membership to allow web access and connectivity to your photo collection.
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