Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #192 in Software
• Brand: Adobe
• Model: 65026616
• 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 7.50" l, .85 pounds

Features

• Stay connected with your favorite people and memories with new Photoshop.com membership
• Make ordinary photos extraordinary with easy-to-use editing tools
• Share your stories in beautiful, personalized creations for print and web
• Easily find and view all your photos
• Share your photos in fun, interactive ways with invitation-only Online Albums

Amazon.com
Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 software combines power and simplicity so you can make ordinary photos extraordinary; tell engaging stories in beautiful, personalized creations for print and web; and easily find and view all your photos. New Photoshop.com membership* works with Photoshop Elements so you can protect your photos with automatic online backup and 2 GB of storage; view your photos anywhere you are; and share your photos in fun, interactive ways with invitation-only Online Albums.

Effortlessly select an area and simultaneously apply incredible effects with a single stroke of Adobe Smart Brush. Click to enlarge.

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.

Showcase your photos in one-of-a-kind Online Albums with your choice of dynamic, animated templates. Click to enlarge.

Easily upload photos to your website, iPhone, or CEIVA Digital Photo Frames, or view them on your TV.

Do it all with one powerful yet easy-to-use product
Use Photoshop Elements with Photoshop.com* for all your photo needs--organize, edit, and enhance photos; make unique photo creations; share in print and on the web; protect your photos; and view them anywhere you are.

*Available only in the U.S.

Introducing new Photoshop.com membership*
Works with Photoshop Elements to help you protect your photos from computer loss and hard drive crashes with automatic online backup and enough storage (2 GB) for up to 1,500 photos; view your photos anywhere you are; and share your photos in fun, interactive ways with invitation-only Online Albums. And upgrade to Plus membership at any time and get 18 GB more storage, and a variety of inspiring ideas, tutorials, seasonal artwork, and templates delivered regularly to your software.

*Available only in the U.S.

Select and apply with a single stroke
Simultaneously select a specific photo area and apply incredible effects with a single stroke of new Adobe Smart Brush. Improve lighting, add rich textures, and more with eight libraries of over 50 sophisticated effects.

Go from flawed to phenomenal in seconds
Whiten teeth, make skies bluer, get rid of red eye, and take advantage of many more shortcuts that reduce common, multistep editing tasks to a single click or brush stroke.

Dramatically transform your photos with easy-to-use tools
Convert your color originals to elegant, nuanced black-and-whites, or use color curves adjustments to get the perfect exposure.

Count on step-by-step assistance
Want to touch up a scratch? Create a scrapbook page? Add artistic effects that make a photo look like a pencil sketch? Photoshop Elements walks you through key steps to make it easy to get the results you want fast.

Quickly clean your scene of unwanted elements
You took five shots of your subject, but pedestrians and cars distract from the scene in every one. Now, see only what you want to see in your photos--use Adobe Photomerge Scene Cleaner to simply brush away any elements that changed positions between photos to create a single, perfect composite.

Composite with amazing results
Create flawless group shots in just a few clicks with amazing Adobe Photomerge technology. Photomerge also lets you create seamless panoramas and combine elements of different faces for entertaining results.

Share experiences in fresh, exciting ways on the web
Showcase your photos in one-of-a-kind Online Albums with your choice of dynamic, animated templates--including new, visually stunning options. Adobe Flash technology lets viewers interact with your photos for an entertaining experience.

Show off your creativity in unique ways
Make amazing printed photo creations--like scrapbook pages, photo books, and cards--that you can customize to get exactly the look you envision.

Organize your library with ease
See all your photos in one convenient place, and find photos fast using powerful, flexible visual tags and a variety of viewing and searching options, including a new text search box.

Customer Reviews

A serious photo editing program
I like Photoshop Elements. I've always considered it a good option for photographers who haven't spent the many, many hours needed to learn the full version of Photoshop. That's not to mention the extra $560 the full version will set you back.

I've taught Photoshop at a local college since 2000 and use it in my graphic design business. There are real advantages to having the pro version, for pros. However, there are some real disadvantages, too. I see person after person come into my classes having paid the full price for the full version. With very, very few exceptions these people don't push their program hard enough to exceed Element's limitations and probably never will. There seems to be the mind set that because these people have spend a bundle on their cameras and lenses they "need" the "better" version of Photoshop. They don't. Elements can handle a huge percentage of photo editing and design jobs. You may have to use a different tool than what you're used to but can usually achieve identical results. A better camera can produce better photos. Photoshop CS- whatever isn't a better photo editing program. The underlying graphics engine is identical in both programs. Elements just has a simpler interface. If you think that Photosho Elements is complicated, try learning CS4.

To prove my point to a professional photographer friend I had him come up with a dozen photos. He edited them in CS3 and I used Elements 7. Our results were different on a couple of the images but that wasn't due to Elements but that my interpretation was different from his. Even he agreed.

That said my recommendation is that if you are getting serious about editing your photos, start with Elements. It will save you a ton of scratch and the vast majority of what you learn will be easily transferable to the full program. If you find that you outgrow Elements some day you haven't lost anything. Chances are that Photoshop will have a new version out and even the upgrade for Photoshop is half again as expensive as Elements at full retail.

As to the value of this version of Elements. Some people have written that they find it slower than previous ones. Maybe they had an earlier version of Elements. I haven't found that to be the case on my pretty middle of the road computer. Are the new tools worth the cost? That's a tougher question. If you have version 4 or earlier, absolutely. Version 5, I'd say yes. Version 6? Probably. I usually skip a version when upgrading.

There are some new tools that are nice. The Adobe Photoshop.com isn't too compelling. I've been on Flickr for years and don't plan to move off. Adobe's site doesn't offer an real advantages for me.

The Scene Cleaner and Smart Brush are both very useful tools. The Action Player lets me run pre-recorded Photoshop actions in Elements. That's not quite like making my own, but there are hundreds, possibly thousands of pre-recorded Photoshop actions available for download. Actions can perform automated changes to your images and can be quite useful

Other tools, like the Blue Sky brush have limited functionality. Painting a blue sky over water is easy and cool. Doing so over trees or any complicated horizon is a total pain. The Whiter Teeth brush is handy, though that wasn't that hard to accomplish before. But keeping with Elements' philosophy of simplifying photo editing, I can see that it is an obvious inclusion. And the Surface Blur tool, well don't get too excited about it.

Adobe's Photo Organizer is still an excellent tool, though I would have liked to see Adobe include Bridge instead, as they did in the Mac version of Elements.

Adobe includes some guided activities like creating holiday cards and scrapbooks with Elements. If that appeals to you, there are wizards that guide you through the activities. The results aren't quite professional looking but probably better than most people could achieve on their own.

It's the industry standard in a package for folks who don't need the whole shebang.
What can you say about Photoshop?

It changed the world of digital photography. If you really want close control over your digital photographs and other digital images, there is simply nothing better available to the non-professional user and few things better available even to professionals!

If you really don't know what Photoshop is, well, here are a few examples of what can be done with this fine piece of software:

1) You can view images

2) You can edit images (get rid of red eye, scratches and graininess, change colors, light levels, etc. in either the entire image or in just one part and even do complex edits like making your dog look like he has zebra stripes in a particular photo)

3) You can combine images (e.g. if you can't get a decent family photograph because in each sample photograph somebody looks bad, then you can take everybody's best shot and combine them into one single image)

4) You can take pieces out of images (in addition to cutting and cropping, you can outright cut a person out of the picture)

5) You can add captions and lettering to images.

6) You can put all kinds of effects into your images such as lens flares, clouds, etc. You can also create psychedelic effects, make things sharper, duller, blur boundaries between items, etc.

7) Photoshop also has a full panoply of items that you'd expect to find in any art program (paint brush tools, pencils, erasers, etc.)

8) Photoshop allows you to create images in layers, so that you can move and edit one part without affecting others.

9) Photoshop also makes it easy to scan multiple images from your flatbed scanner at the same time and import them to separate image files. Forget about scanning one at a time or scanning a bunch of photos into one big file and then cutting and pasting. My wife wanted to digitize hundreds of old family photos and this software, literally, saved me dozens of hours of work time and blessed us with a resource that has become a wellspring of wonderful memories.

10) Photoshop allows you to enlarge and shrink images and will even help minimize pixelation in enlarged images.

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Now, for those of you who DO know what Photoshop is and what it can do, here are a few things you might want to know if you are considering upgrading to or buying this piece of software.

1) The first thing one notices is the new welcome screen. You can opt to enter the program or the organizer, as usual, or you can opt to interact with[...], an online resource for photoshop users, where one can either work with others or store one's images (among other services) online.

2) The interface is fairly similar to Photoshop Elements 6, but it offers some interesting new features. For instance, one can edit the features of the desktop (make it darker, to pop the photos or brighter if one likes brightness).

3) In the "New File" option, one can now use a pull down menu to create a scrapbook file (when one is working with a blank file), which is good for scrapbookers. My wife likes it, but I don't use it too often.

4) When you're working with guided edit, you can now use an "Automated Actions" feature that allows one to take advantage of what Adobe calls the "Action player". It is, essentially a wizard that gives one step by step instructions on various edits, such as "Lose weight", "Resize and crop" or "Special effects".

5) The bug that made it tough to move objects with the arrow keys has been fixed in this version of Elements.

6) If you weren't impressed with what the "Action player" could do in #4, well, take heart. You can create your own actions so that, once you have executed a complex series of edits in one photo, you can do the same for every subsequent one by simply executing an action. Not only that, you can share your actions with friends and download actions off the net. Tons are available.

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In truth, there are a lot more features and uses than the ones I have mentioned. Photoshop, like any piece of enormously robust software, is simply beyond an easy summary. However, Elements 7 is an exciting hint at where this mainstay of graphical software is heading. There are a lot of new good ideas and it really feels like a winner.

Lots to Learn!
RATING = 1 STAR as delivered / 4 STARS with supplemental book from the library!!!!

I'm new to Photoshop Elements. I really need a good digital photo editor because my pictures don't always turn out. I was going to order PSE6 and then saw PSE7 was coming out in October so I pre-ordered PSE7 on Amazon.

When I first installed this program I thought it was REALLY, REALLY slow to use, and there is really no documentation provided on how to use it. CRAZY! I figured out how to do basic things as best I could and tried figuring out how to get help from Adobe's website - just generally not intuitive.

Well - being resourceful and not ready to give up I got Photoshop Elements for Dummies from the library. I'm currently on Page 18, and I'm finally getting it - It's a miracle. There are things that you would NEVER figure out on your own (ex: hover and blue text will appear and you can click on the blue text to get specific help for that functionality!!!!)

My advice - buy the software and then ahold of some good documentation that will help you figure out how to use this!!!