Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 (Win/Mac) [OLD VERSION]
- Make every photo look its best with easy-to-use editing options in Adobe Photoshop Elements 9
- Make photo books, cards, calendars, and other creations that look just the way you want
- Quickly share photos in fun, interactive Online Albums and on mobile devices
- Automatically organize all your photos and video clips from one convenient place
- Enjoy automatic online backup with 2GB of free storage; access your photos and videos virtually anywhere
PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS 9 MLPT Simply unlimited! The newest version of the #1 selling consumer photo-editing software, Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 delivers powerful yet easy-to-use editing options that help you tell your life stories in amazing ways. Make every photo look its best. Quickly share your memories on Facebook; in Online Albums; and in printed photo books, cards, calendars, and more that look just the way you want. And automatically organize and help protect all your photos and video clips
List Price: $ 99.99
Price: $ 70.65
3 comments ↓
My favorite photo editor,
I upgraded from Photoshop Elements (PSE) 6 for Windows to PSE9 for Mac and was glad to see that the Mac and Windows versions were essentially the same. Since I use iPhoto for organizing, I can’t say anything about PSE’s Organizer, but I gave the Editor a workout.
Elements is at the high end of what I’ll spend for a photo editor, and I buy roughly every third version to keep the price reasonable over the years, so it’s time, and I’m happy to say that 9.0 fits my needs . . . and then some.
Like PSE6, PSE9 it is a great overall photo editor. It does a good job of enhancing photos, either with a click of a button or just a few clicks if I happen to disagree with the Auto Smart Fix. It can process batches of photos that all need the same work done to them. And it has enough manual controls (histograms, contrast, brightness, shadows/highlights, red eye, color correction, layers, etc.) to do just about anything to a photo you can imagine.
Pros:
* It works smoothly with iPhoto; I could switch back and forth easily and quickly and open multiple photos at once for editing.
* It’s fast on my MacBook Pro.
* The editor hasn’t crashed yet, and I’m running through thousands of photos.
* All of the features that I’m familiar with from previous versions still work well, and some, like the magic lasso, work even better than before.
* Content-aware healing can perform minor miracles in my hands. In the hands of an expert, or someone with more patience, it can probably perform major miracles.
* The Guided Edits helped me visualize the steps involved for some of the more complicated features, which helped me make better use of the Full Edit.
* PhotoMerge Group Shot is incredibly easy to use. I had two photos shot at different distances, and PSE had no trouble making the necessary adjustments.
* Removing clutter from photographs is simple.
* Oh happy day, Elements now has layer masks, a feature that used to be the domain of its pricier sibling. Now you can make parts of a layer more or less opaque, allowing for some really neat effects. I won’t use this often, but a few of my photos are just crying out for it.
Cons:
* The Welcome Screen is still annoying. Fortunately, you can set it up to go straight to the Organizer or Editor.
* It still can’t batch process the Save for Web feature. Sigh.
* My camera has a panorama assistant but doesn’t stitch them together, so I was interested in PSE9′s enhanced panorama stitching. For the most part, it’s very easy. PSE does most of the work. Unfortunately, it created an enormous file–117mg–out of my five 5mg photos and ran out of RAM before it could finish everything–even after I maxed out the RAM in Preferences. I ended up with a very nice panorama but had to reduce the file size before doing some of the final touches myself. Then the final jpeg size turned out to be smaller than any of the individual photos.
* Yeah, I would have liked a manual.
If you are currently using PSE 8, there may not be enough new features to warrant an upgrade yet, though the content-aware healing might make it worth it. From version 6? Definitely.
If you have never used Elements, this is a great application with a bit of a learning curve. Get the free one-month trial, and borrow a book on it from the library. That’s where I’ll be headed once the manuals for version 9 show up.
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|Tremendous update! Don’t miss it.,
I’ve been using Photoshop Elements for over 5 years and have always thought it was a tremendous value. I’ve also used the full version of Photoshop, and if you can afford it – it’s worth the money. I’m a professional photographer and marketer. I use Photoshop Elements almost every day and it does 99.5% of the things that I would use Photoshop to do (off the top of my head I can’t think of anything I want to do in Photoshop that I can’t do in Photoshop Elements).
I was thinking of updating to the full version of Photoshop for it’s new content aware healing features. Photoshop Elements 9 adds this functionality to Photoshop Elements (and some other great additions too). If you’re looking for a photo editing software application Photoshop Elements is the best value on the market. Period!
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|Excellent,
I think what Adobe has discovered through 9 versions of Elements, is that no 2 people want the same photo editor or photo organizer.
For organization, some want a simple utility that just shows directories and thumbnails, while others at the opposite polar extreme want to be able to slice and dice their photos eight ways from Wednesday. And of course, there are others at every point on the spectrum between.
Likewise, with editing, some have no interest in the process and just want Adobe to give them a few magic buttons that will analyze their photos and provide a good guess at the corrections required. But others embrace the editing process almost as another hobby in addition to photography and want to exercise complete control over every aspect of their photos. And, here too, there are others at every point between those extremes.
And what Adobe has provided is a program that seeks to give everyone what they want. A completely flexible approach to organizing and editing that allows you to approach those two functions with whatever degree of involvement and complexity you choose.
Unfortunately, because the software has so many ways to do everything in order to accommodate everyone, it is almost impenetrable to those who have never used it before. You will need someone or something to show you all the ways that you can use Elements so that you can select the approach that’s right for you. If you’ve never used Elements and your plan is to teach yourself using the Help files and experimentation, I think you’re in for a confusing and frustrating experience.
I’m convinced that the best way to approach Elements, if you’ve never used it before, is with an online or DVD based training course. The advantage to getting your first exposure in this way, is that you will have have a good idea of the width and depth of the software as well as having an idea of how to approach each organizing or editing challenge. You may not have all the details and you may not even remember all the steps, but you will know what is possible and generally how to do it and you can then refer to your books for further guidance. I learned Photoshop many years ago in this way, and I repeated the process with Elements prior to writing this review. (I should say here that Version 9 courses were not yet available, so I used a Version 8 course. Elements’ interface is little changed from Version 8 (except for new features), so this works perfectly well.) I think it’s the best method for acquiring basic skill with a complex piece of software. Just Google “Elements” with either “Lynda” or “Kelby” to get the links for two of the better ones that I know of.
I don’t have a strong opinion, one way or the other, regarding the Organizer. I don’t take a sufficiently large number of photographs to warrant “organizing.” I just download each set that I take into its own directory whose name reflects the date and subject. I don’t find tags and ratings and “Smart Albums” necessary. For me, the “Folder Location” view of the Organizer is all I need and I can get that with any number of freeware organizers and browsers. I will use the Elements Organizer because of its integration with the Editor but I don’t find it especially compelling.
But the Editor is a very different story. Short of full-fledged Photoshop CS, it’s the most powerful photo editing software anyone is ever likely to need. And version 9′s new features – the Context-Sensitive Healing Brush and Layer Masks – make it hard to conceive of a situation where an amateur photographer would ever need more. (Except in rare circumstances when Photoshop’s more esoteric features are required. e.g. you can play Actions (a pre-recorded sequence of editing steps) in Elements, but you can’t create them. To do that, you need Photoshop.)
The Editor justifies Elements’ price. The Organizer is a throw-in.
If you are new to digital photography and are looking for software to help you “tweak” your photos and correct some of your mistakes, Elements is perfect for you. You can start with the very simple “Quick Photo Edit,” move eventually to the “Guided Photo Edit,” and ultimately graduate to the “Full Photo Edit.” If you are an experienced amateur and are looking for software with much of Photoshop’s editing capability but at a fraction of the cost, Elements is perfect for you as well.
(N.B. If you intend to run Elements 9 on a Windows machine with a single-core CPU, be advised that as of this writing, Elements has a bug that will cause the Context Sensitive Healing Brush to crash in this environment. Adobe acknowledges this and is working to produce a patch.)
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