Thursday, August 18, 2011

Photoshop Elements: A Poor Man’s (or Woman’s) Photoshop

With the switch to Mac I lost my Photoshop CS5 Extended… which is just sad. I do not have the $999.00 to spend on the Photoshop CS5 Extended so I reluctantly went with Photoshop Elements 9. Elements 9 only costs $99.00 (which I got free with my Wacom Tablet). The first thing I noticed is that it works very similar to Photoshop CS5. Then, I noticed that everything I do in CS5 to develop my images is available in Photoshop Elements 9 with only minor exceptions.

It’s tools include:*
Photomerge (for panoramic photos)
Layers
Blend Modes
Most Filters
Supports the Wacom Tablet sensitivity

What it does not include:*
Smart Objects
Not all filters

Since I still use Photoshop Lightroom 3 for 95% of my editing this was not a big deal. All and all I still want CS5 because of the power and all the available options but until I can come up with the 999.00 for CS5 Extended Photoshop Elements 9 will certainly do the trick.

Now, if you happen to go to college, have a kid in school, home school, or you work for an education institution you can get CS5 for $168.00 using the education discount. Wow is all I can say!

*This is not a complete list but rather a list of items that I specifically use for photo editing.

1 comment:

  1. Yep. Sorry about that. Amazing how a software can charge $1000 for it. Yuck.

    Well, you have two out three ways to get the discount. Makes you wonder how much the software is really worth!

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