photoshop V elements

[panthergirl]

Just wondering if there was a huge difference between photoshop and elements? I use elements (and still don't know half of it) but I bought it for photo editing purposes before I even realised there was such a thing as digi scrapbooking. So would I be astounded by what I've been missing out on or are they minor differences. Thanks in advance for any responses.

[Diginellie]

Well this question is asked every day on most sites I visit and the answer is pretty much the same. You can do some amazing stuff with PSE and many artists on this site use it (check out Kate aka Digime's gallery) - it is definitely not an inferior programme to the full blown PS and probably shouldn't be compared. It really stands on its own. To be honest when I look at LO's I just can't tell what programme was used to create them, I appreciate them for their artistic merit. I suppose what I am saying here is that IMHO spending heaps upgrading won't necessarily make your work easier or even `better' - whatever that means to you :)

If you are an aspiring designer then PS is a must and is the industry standard, and I guess it is then a business tax deduction. Here in Australia PS is hugely expensive and beyond my means, but I am not a wannabe designer or even CT member. I think I will be buying a DSLR camera first. BTW I also have PSPX and I like to use this as well for a lot of stuff, but most tutorials around the place are PS,PSE based.

ETA I have also noticed that for many people learning PS is a hobby in itself - I can understand this and if I was looking for a time consuming hobby I would go for this and hang the expense - however my time is limited so I am happy to continue with PSE :) If you want to know more info. then do a search at some of the busy sites and you will get a lot more detail, good luck!

[kygirl]

I upgraded from PSE to CS2 recently, but only because Photoshop offered a fantastic upgrade deal. There are things you can do in CS2 that you can't always do in Elements, such as run actions and place text on a path, but everything you need to do a good layout is in Elements. I like CS2, but I wouldn't pay full price for it. Elements is just too good.

[Nevermore]

I have seen way too much good work done with any number of programs to think any one of them is a must have. I also have to confess that I do spend a fair bit of time just learning PS but nearly all of it is for the purpose of scrapping in the long haul (Honest!).

I am in Canada and I paid half an arm for PS. I forget what long winded excuse I came up with to justify it but I think if I divided the cost by the hours using it, it would be less than pennies an hour at this point.

I can say that I was a PSP fan for three solid years. It was harder to find scrapping tutorials but they are out there. I was encouraged to move to PS because there were a great number more tutorials, the brushes are better (although the interface is not) and because JASC sold out to Corel. I was beginning to feel that I knew PSP inside out (I took a great number of courses in it and used it for web graphics and scrapping for three years so I had a lot of time invested). I can honestly say with PS that I have been using it for two years and every day I find something new. That is not an endorsement for getting it for scrapping, but it does give you some idea of its virtually unlimited potential.

[Diginellie]

I read somewhere (I think it was from Chris Ford), that even one of the guys who developed PS is continually surprised by what it can do (it almost has a life of its own and a kind of `gestalt' quality, by which I mean that the final PS was more than the designers ever envisaged once it was finished. It is a totally awesome programme.

ETA I have found all brushes work in PSE4 and it is possible to buy actions specially designed for Elements - from Atomic Cupcake and others. You just have to load them in :)