bit-tech Shopping: Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 w/ Premiere Elements 4 Bundle

• Microsoft Windows Vista
• Microsoft Windows XP

Rating: 10

Time with product: 30 Days

Strengths: Easy to use, powerful, slick.

Weaknesses: No product manual, help needs work.

Summary: I love this product. I have previously used the full Photoshop program and was worried that this would be extremely limited, but for what I need it is perfect. I can't afford the full Photoshop, they do a great job for the reduced price.

Rating: 8

Time with product: 1 Weeks

Strengths: Bundle price, good photo editing software (Element)

Weaknesses: Premiere is of a questionable value; resource hog

Summary: I was looking for something to edit and organize my digital photos. More than a decade ago, I used the full version of Photoshop (version 2 or 3 or 4); I think it is now version 10. Five years ago, I used Photostop LE which I believe was the Element?s predecessor. I enjoyed using both versions. Their commands and features were intuitive and, more importantly, they got the job done. However, I used them for typesetting and art work exclusively, not digital photos; there is a difference. Otherwise, I have no experience with previous versions of Element or Premiere.As I said, I was looking for something to edit and organize the digital photos. Digital photos from my digital camera have been piling up for further processing. I did not want to spend $1K and to re-learn the full version of Photoshop. I heard the learning curve is very steep even though I knew how to use the first versions more than a decade ago. I investigated other packages in the market and concluded that Element should do the job. Let me say that Element comes far short of what I considered to be a full fledge graphics editor; that title probably belongs to Photoshop. However, the features in Element are sufficient for an average home/novice user to edit/manipulate/clean-up digital photos. It will take some learning but it is not difficult.If you just want to organize photos, you might want to try the free Picasso software from Google. Today a ?photo session? is limited to the size of the flash memory (we are talking about hundreds, if not thousands), whereas traditionally it was limited to a roll of film (24 or 36). Does one really want to sit in front of the computer and ?edit? hundreds of photos? I am using Element to edit/manipulate only a handful of photos in a ?photo session?.As for Premiere, it is a different story. When I decided to order Element, I noticed there is a bundle package with Premiere for only $10 more (after the rebate of course). My initial research indicated what photo is to Element, video is to Premiere. So, I brought the bundle package in anticipation that I would need to edit and organize my videos one day (though not today). I did not use Premiere extensively enough to have any positive or negative feedback. As a matter of fact, I just played with it several times because I do not have any significant number of videos. I bought the bundle package because it was only $10 more. However, I did notice that both the CPU and memory needles of the CPU gadget were in the red danger zones when I created movies. So, Premiere could be a resource hog. But then, what does one expect in processing videos? Furthermore, I noticed that MS Windows has the free Movie Maker which functions similar to Premiere. Perhaps Premiere has more and richer set of features. However, I am unable to make a determination at this point.Conclusion: If you are an average novice computer use, Element is sufficient for your use. You won?t regret spending your dollars for Element. If you just want to organize your photos, go with the free Picasso. The jury is still out for Premiere whether or not it is worth the extra $10. Needless to say, both did not come with a paper manual.

Rating: 10

Time with product: 2 Months

Strengths: Extremely easy to edit and organize your photos. You can archive both video clips and pictures.

Weaknesses: None that I know of as of yet.

Summary: Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0 with Premiere Elements 4.0 Bundle is an excellent photo archive and editing solution. While it is extremely easy to edit and organize your photos, another important notable feature is that you can store both pictures AND video clips. I previously upgraded from Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 to Adobe Lightroom 1.0, only to find out later that Lightroom does not allow you to archive your video clips.

Rating: 8

Time with product: 3 Days

Strengths: great features for both photo and video editing.

Weaknesses: lack of instructions on how to do much of anything.

Summary: I love all the features of the Adobe products, but it's definately a challenge to learn to use them! A few days of experimenting, reading, and watching tutorials on utube have helped immensely. I'm sure in a few weeks I'll be producing great projects with little effort, I'm just caught in the learning stage which can be frustrating, but well worth it in the end. I'm a total novice at editing video, but after a day or two of messing around I've already got a couple videos that look fantastic, and I know I'm just scratching the surface of what these programs can do! Well worth the money.

Rating: 8

Time with product: 2

Strengths: Many photo and video editing/production tools for this version. Good for home users.

Weaknesses: A steep learning curve for many of the features.Expensive.

Summary: The Photoshop Elements 6 provides very good photo editing and organizer tools. I use it to organize all my photos. Likewise, the Premiere Elements 4 provides very good video editing and production tools. I was able to combine several home videos with slide shows of still pictures in about one hour. The video rendering time seems to take long on my computer but not any longer than Pinnacle Studio 11 (about 17 minutes for an 11 minute video/slide show combination in DVD quality. Overall, I would buy this combination again.