My old Photoshop died so I bought Elements 8. I usually hate the "embellishments" but I actually like this. This program is so user friendly.
It's a bit weird to press a button and instantly see what used to take me hours and hours as a professional artist in the olden days!

ctcarol said:Kathy, when you say Elements8 is user friendly, does that mean you don't have to take a class to figure it out? I guess I'm like Lin...no patience.

I have always used a handful of features on photoshop to crop, rotate, set levels, sharpen, use the clone tool, etc. So first I did a trial on Elements and located how to do these things. But I found it much easier that my old Photoshop program to do this and more. there are tutorials and some info on how to do new things like merge 2 photos that I tried too.

If you've never used Photoshop, you'd have to start from scratch which would require learning and patience.

Here's one I posted already.

One more.

Hmmm, I wonder if there a "photoshop for dummies" book. Sounds like a winter project.

Kathy,
Where do you find the time?

This requires very little learning curve for me and I'm exploring what I paid for!!

Just made these 2 in 10 minutes.

I have been using Elements 2 at first and now I am still using Elements 4. Also, at my job I used to have the regular professional Adobe Photoshop installed. Now for someone like me, Elements is truly fine! 2 pixels unsharp mask works wonders....I also use the "bridge" to open my files from there.

So are your files photoshop files or jpegs? (Trying to picture what you mean by "bridge.")

Bridge is part of Elements 4. It lists all pictures in any folder and so they can easily be viewed and opened ( or deleted) from there with Elements. Bridge is not part of later versions of Element?
I always save as jpg.

They have 2 directions to chose in Elements8 now. Edit and organize. I bet it is the organize feature which I haven't played with due to my small hard drive. Looks like it could be like Picasa?

Actually when I go to "open" a file there are images and you can delete them, etc. A new feature for me is the process multiple files feature under "File" for doing a batch like all the pic in a folder at once. You can resize, rename, convert to a different file type, use auto level, auto contrast, auto color, sharpen, AND watermark or caption the entire folder!! I used to make macros to resize a batch. Amazing!

Kathy, I'm using the Sony Photoshop from my camera, but I don't get such awesome pics. I guess I'm photoshopping too much!

Easy to do!

I'm using Adobe lightroom, Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 and Corel Painter. This one cropped, background completely painted out and re-framed.
Here's an example:
Before;

After;

This one background painted out and texture added slightly for large format printing:
Before;

After;

I have elements 8. When you say painted out, do you hand paint around the flower or is there an easy way? ( I've always wondered.)

I do have Photoshop for dummies and I'm sure there's a way, just haven't found anyother way than using large brushes for the larger areas and pixel size brushes down to the subject line. Can you say tedious ?

That's how I've always done it too. But I feel stupid when I do it! Watercolors are faster!!

A Dendrobium shot that didn't come out so good....


So I used Corel Painter, water colours, to give it new life.