Product Description

This package includes: Adobe Photoshop Elements 7: The #1 selling consumer photo-editing software*, Adobe® Photoshop® Elements combines power and simplicity so you can make ordinary photos extraordinary, tell engaging stories in beautiful, personalized creations for print and the web, and easily find and view all your photos. Adobe Premiere Elements 7: Adobe® Premiere® Elements 7 makes it easy to create incredible movies. Get started quickly with automated moviemaking options, add knockout visuals and sound, share your movies everywhere, and stay connected with your favorite people and memories.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #319 in Software
• Brand: Adobe
• Model: 65027100
• Released on: 2008-10-13
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP
• Format: CD-ROM
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.40" h x 5.50" w x 7.40" l, 1.65 pounds

Features

• Combines two powerful yet easy-to-use products at a great value, so you can tell amazing stories with photos and videos
• Stay connected with your favorite people and memories with new Photoshop.com membership
• Protect your photos and videos with automatic online backup and 2GB of storage, enough for up to 1,500 photos or 25 minutes of DVD-quality video
• Access your photos and videos anywhere you are
• Share your photos in fun, interactive ways via invitation-only Online Albums

Amazon.com
Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 & Adobe Premiere Elements 7 software combines two powerful yet easy-to-use products at a great value, so you can tell amazing stories with photos and videos. Easily create extraordinary photos and incredible movies, and use them together in cinematic slide shows and more. New Photoshop.com membership* works with Adobe Photoshop Elements & Adobe Premiere Elements so you can protect your photos and videos with automatic online backup and 2 GB of storage; access your photos and videos anywhere you are; and share your photos in fun, interactive ways with invitation-only Online Albums.

Create extraordinary photos and tell amazing stories with Adobe Photoshop Elements 7.

Easily make movies and get incredible results with Adobe Premiere Elements 7. Click to enlarge.

Get the most complete solution so you can do more with your photos and videos
Enjoy all the functionality of Adobe Photoshop Elements and Adobe Premiere Elements software, and take advantage of integration that delivers even more ways for you to creatively use photos and videos together--all for a great value.

Introducing new Photoshop.com membership*
Works with Adobe Photoshop Elements & Adobe Premiere Elements to help you protect your photos and videos from computer loss and hard drive crashes with automatic online backup and enough storage (2 GB) for up to 1,500 photos or a 25 minutes of DVD-quality video, or combination of both; access your photos and videos anywhere you are; and share your photos in fun, interactive ways with invitation-only Online Albums. Upgrade to Plus membership at any time and get 15 GB more storage, and a variety of inspiring ideas, tutorials, seasonal artwork, and movie themes, delivered regularly to your software.

*Available only in the U.S.

Save time with centralized access to your photos and video clips
Access all your photos and video clips from one convenient place, no matter which application you're using.

Instantly add cinematic flair to your photo slide shows
Create a traditional photo slide show, and then let new InstantMovie automatically add video-style effects, transitions, motion graphics, and more. Preview the slide show in full screen and then burn it to disc or upload it to the web to share with family and friends.

Do more with individual video frames
Capture a single video frame; add text, graphics, and other enhancements; and then put the frame back in your movie for a fun or dramatic freeze-frame effect. Or use it to create a personalized disc cover for your movie.

Include treasured memories in your movies
Add visual depth and variety to your movies by including digital stills and scanned film photos.

Create extraordinary photos and tell amazing stories

See all your photos in one convenient place where you can scroll through them, apply visual keyword tags, and view and retrieve them fast--even if your library includes thousands of photos. Click to enlarge.

• Make all your photos extraordinary
  Easily get the results you want with your photos. Simultaneously select an area and apply incredible effects with a single brush stroke; get whiter teeth and bluer skies in seconds; count on step-by-step editing assistance; and quickly create the perfect photo by cleaning your scene of unwanted elements or making great group shots, seamless panoramas, and more.
  
  
• Make unique photo creations
  Use flexible themed layouts to create everything from photo books and postcards to scrapbook pages and disc covers. Entertain family and friends by sharing photos in visually stunning interactive web galleries with one-of-a-kind templates. Take advantage of online offerings to upload photos directly to the web to order prints and more, and easily share on your TV and iPhone.
  
  
• Easily find and view all your photos
  Keep your photos and video clips at your fingertips with custom tagging, new text searching and other powerful search capabilities, and viewing choices that allow you to sort and find your photos the way that works best for you. Scroll through your photos, apply tags, and view and retrieve photos quickly--even when your library grows to include thousands of photos.
  
  

Add visual appeal with hundreds of effects and transitions, interactive disc menus, animated titles, and professional credits. Click to enlarge.

Easily make movies and get incredible results

• Create your first movie in minutes
  Get started quickly with all your video clips and photos at your fingertips and easy options for making incredible movies. Count on new automated options to find your best clips or instantly edit them into a polished movie using Hollywood directors' creative techniques. Or simply drag and drop thumbnails of clips, transitions, and effects to the Sceneline to create your story.
  
  
• Add knockout visuals and sound
  Give your movies professional style with dazzling visual and audio effects. Easily combine elements of different videos for entertaining results, or impress your audience by adding animated titles, rich audio, amazing special effects, TV-style transitions, and custom, professionally designed interactive disc menus.
  
  
• Share your movies everywhere
  Easily share your movies on DVD or Blu-ray Disc, broadcast far and wide by uploading your movies directly to YouTube or your personal sharing site, or play movies on mobile phones and other devices.
  
  

Customer Reviews

Two for one
I have the Adobe Photoshop Elements & Premiere Elements 7 duo installed on my VISTA powered laptop and have worked with them several days. I started using Adobe Photoshop Elements version 3 a number of years ago and thought it was good, but somewhat complicated to use with a long learning curve involved. The new Elements version 7 retains most of the original features and complexity but is upgraded and the tools are more sophisticated in how they are applied and the results they produce.

Some reviewers of Adobe Photoshop Elements have upgraded from version 6 and complain that there is little new in the latest edition. That may be true, but there is a noticeable difference between version 3 and this most recent rendition. One of the most obvious features to appear in version 7 is the addition of on-line storage, photo sharing and available tutorials.

There is an extra charge for Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 "Plus" which provides additional on-line storage space. This is not to imply that Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 "basic" is one of those come-on condensed programs that get bundled in new computers. Photoshop Elements 7 out of the box is a full blown photo editing program and stays that way without any additional charge unless that additional on-line storage is desired. The downside to this option to invest in the "Plus" feature is how the program startup screen nags to join every time the program is opened. So far I haven't found a way to say no thanks--don't bother me with this again.

The Adobe Photoshop Elements programs are consistently rated number one in digital photo editing reviews and that is probably deserved. I recently purchased, installed and started to use the Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 Ultimate program for editing my photos. This program is often rated number two by reviewers, but it is cheaper than the Adobe software. I like the Corel program a lot, but the Adobe program is equally good and maybe just a bit better in some ways--fancier and more colorful screens for one thing. However, for the advanced amateur digital photographer like me the difference is a matter of which program is easier to use. I think that may be a matter of personal choice in this case.

Now for the Adobe PREMIER Elements 7: This is the program one needs in order to download, construct, edit and produce video/slide show projects. It is the DVD (and Blu-ray) maker lots of editing programs lack. I have previously used a Roxio video making program and found it buggy and without all of the flexibility I wanted. The Adobe Premier Elements 7 program has more options and creative features. It is certainly easier to use than the Roxio software.

As with all of the DVD maker programs, one must have the right computing capacity and the proper DVD burning drive. Older wimpy computers will probably have trouble with Premier Elements 7 and apparently crashes are not uncommon if there isn't enough RAM available. I have the software loaded into a VISTA laptop and not had any problems of note. Saving a project as one goes along is a good thing to do just in case.

This software is primarily and obviously well designed for making movie type videos. However, I have used my Adobe Premier Elements 7 program mostly for creating slide shows from my collections of digital photos and it does a great job. It allows me to organize my pictures add transitions between them in a slide show, put background music in and insert titles too. I like the ability to arrange things in DVD chapters and menus and my finished slide shows surprise me in how professional they look.

So far, I have not had any problem with creating DVD shows that work in my disk players connected to ordinary television sets.

I can recommend both Adobe Premier Elements 7 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 7. The digital photographer just beginning to edit photos and videos will find these programs useful as will the more advanced picture makers.

A Version to Avoid
The primary reason for this release is Adobe launching its new Photoshop website, which is Adobe's attempt to compete with social networking and video/image sharing sites like MySpace, YouTube, and Photobucket. Photoshop Elements 7 allows you to directly share/backup your images on that site.. or, at least, you're supposed to be able to. Every time I uploaded my photos, I got a message that the images were damaged/corrupted and could not be displayed. Fixes for this problem will probably be added quickly (they may already be up by the time you read this review), but it just goes to show that PE7 was released with significant bugs.

Beyond the online aspects, there's not much new in PE7. Most of the new features in Photoshop Elements are things most users were already doing with layers and/or the airbrush tool. Premiere Elements 7 has some new/improved wizards to help you make slide shows and movies, but other video editors have had those features for a while. Premiere Elements also has some of the more common plugins as part of the main PE program now (SmartSound, etc...), but users of previous PE versions already had access to those things. Finally, Premiere Elements is now listed as having AVCHD support, but - since I don't currently use AVCHD - I haven't personally tested this aspect of the software.

The Photoshop Elements 5/Premiere Elements 3 bundle, released back in 2006, was probably the most streamlined Elements version with a full set of features - and Adobe even put out a patch for it to fix what few bugs there were. Since then, the Elements software has gotten more invasive and more bloated every year. Aspects of PE7 constantly run on your system when you boot up, and altering your config files or startup to stop them will require you to re-install PE. Both programs in PE7 also require significant system resources to run properly, yet neither has significantly improved since 2006. Yes, there have been some new features in both since then, but the increased number of bugs in each version, the increased invasiveness, and the lack of post-release patches make the few new features not worth the upgrade.

I can't recommend buying this software. Those with previous versions of PE are better off sticking with them. New users are better off doing some research and buying an older version or a different piece of software entirely. It is a shame that the Elements line has degenerated like this.

Bloated software that crashes often
I have a relatively quick PC (Quad-Core, 4GB RAM, 1GB Video, etc..) and this software not only takes forever to load, navigation within the application is choppy and SLOW. Granted, I have a lot of files, but other organization apps work fine. It crashed twice while cataloging my library.

I was also not very pleased that the software installs two services that run on your PC all the time. This software (and any others that install resident apps) should be forced to put a big warning label on them that says "WILL NEGATIVELY IMPACT OVERALL PERFORMACE OF YOUR COMPUTER!".

Uninstalling and returning to alternatives.