Adobe Photoshop Elements for $34.99

Amazon's Gold Box Deal of the Day today (in the U.S. only) is Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 for Mac or PC for $34.99 after mail-in rebate.

Elements has always been a somewhat strange product to me...it's Photoshop with some key features missing, but it's still loaded with complexity and isn't optimized strictly for photographers. It's cheap today, though. A tip: Elements is a nice, inexpensive way to get the latest version of Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) if your older version of Photoshop doesn't support it.

Mike

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Comments

[Rodney Topor]

The offer is only valid in the US apparently.

[ed hawco]

Grrrrr! Amazon US only (and they don't deliver to Canada).

BTW, I find PSE to be very useful. I don't need any of the highly advanced stuff in the full version; it's like using a 747 to deliver a pizza. Basic exposure controls, a few filters, a bit of layers work. PSE is all I (or 99% of non-pros) need.

[Bron]

Thanks Mike!

Pretty good deal, for those of us who minimally process.

[Dennis]

Thanks Mike ! I was just looking at it a few days ago for $82 minus the 20 rebate. I used PS Elements in the past when shooting jpegs only and really liked it. (Now I use LR). My wife has been using Picasa on her laptop to track pictures and it's horrible. So I just ordered a copy for her.

[Andrew Burday]

Someone should point out that Elements will only host a subset of ACR. You get the basic panel, the sharpening/noise reduction panel, the camera profile panel, and that's it. No curves, no lens aberration corrections, no b&w conversions. All those operations can be done only on the rendered file in Elements, not in ACR.

I know this is true in Elements 6/Mac, and I'm all but certain it holds for Elements generally. I have enjoyed using Elements as a less expensive introduction to digital image processing, but its raw capabilities are very limited.

[John Banister]

If I want my $20 mail-in rebate, since copies of the claim form will not be accepted, how can I tell that I've downloaded the original pdf document and not a copy?

Still boycotting products with mail-in rebates.

[KeithB]

Andrew:
I don't have it in front of me, but IIRC, if you open ACR from *within Elements*, you get the crippled version. If you open it from Adobe Bridge you get the full version of ACR.

I learned this from Adobe Photoshop:The Missing Manual, which is a great reference.

[J.]

US only?
Tsk.
:)

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Elements doesn't lend itself to the "lossless editing" style of working. This isn't particularly related to big vs. small changes; it's more a question of whether you reliably get it right the first time, or if you need to go back to images and tweak them.

Also, curves adjustment layers with layer masks are like dodging and burning died and gone to heaven, and I don't believe they're in Elements (they're a major part of the lossless editing approach for me).

For snapshot batches and the like, I like Bibble Pro a lot. Or event photos.

[Dave S]

Thanks for the heads up, been wanting to upgrade in order to get raw support for my new G11.

[Nic]

I had never heard of Elements 8 Plus until recently. It brings a lot of extras to the program that you get in the more expensive PS programs, but only for a few bucks over that of the main program.
http://simplephotoshop.com/elementsplus/

may be better links out there.