~ Article by Danie Bester

 

Elements is a “cut down” version of proper Photoshop. Even though Elements lacks a few features, it does not come with the insane price-tag of Photoshop CS5. Even though it is cheaper (Far Cheaper), Elements still has enough tools and power to satisfy most photographers needs. That is, if you’re not running a large commercial studio etc…

Elements also comes with a photo organizer, but in all honesty, Iv’e always disliked it and find it too elementary. Elements, as an organizational tool, is not nearly as powerful compared to other applications like Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, or Mac’s Aperture. For this reason, I’ve always been advocating that you rather start out with Lightroom, which, as an organizational tool, can not be beaten by anything on the market today. Lightroom offers some nifty editing tools too. More importantly, you can edit numerous images at a time by using the “sync” tool. Lightroom can do “everything” when it comes to organizing your images and “almost everything” when it comes to editing. However, on a few occasions one needs to do some editing on pixel level.This is where Elements comes in handy. Elements takes you to pixel level and allows you to work with layers, masks etc…

Apart from missing the wonderful patch tool, there’s not much Elements does not offer compared to proper Photoshop. Elements has nearly all the other professional tools that Photoshop offers, Spot Healing, Marquee Tool, Dodge, Burn…. The list goes on and on. If you just started out with photography, you will find some helpful tools like one button smart fixes and slider controls. There is also a guided edit menu, which guides you step by step through various editing processes. Therefore, as a retouching tool, I can honestly recommend Elements to any budding, or even some professional photographers.

If you’re anything serious about photography, get both Lightroom and Elements. Use Lightroom for the hard lifting, like organizing your photo libraries, creating slideshows and websites, basic editing, and mass editing. Then use Elements for those images where you need to move some pixels around… Even if you buy both these packages it will still cost you far less money than buying proper Photoshop.

 Visit Adobe’s website to learn more about Elements at https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-elements.html

Want to download a trial edition of Elements then visit https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=photoshop_elements&loc=en_us

 

Interested in doing a Photoshop or Lightroom course? then click on any of the following links…