I am looking for a new photo editor. I can not afford PhotoShot CS right now, but Elements 6 looks rather attractive.

What do you guys (and gals) use? What would you recommend?

All feedback appreciated and will help me in making a decisiion.

Also ... how do you get rid of moire in a photo? Will PhotoShop resolve the problem?

Thanks in advance for your responses

A friend in a photo msn community is using elements 6 and likes it. Says you can go back and forth from raw to jpeg or whatever more easily than 5 which is what I have.
Saw it for 59 bucks on Amazon the other day.

I find that the price of Photoshop CS is scandalous. I used Photoshop Elements for a while but I found that as versions advanced, more and more useful features were removed and useless ones were added.

I've now switch over to Paint Shop Pro. The price is very reasonable, there are a lot of useful features for people at my level (the skin-smoother is neat). There are some things that I used to use in Photoshop that I haven't found yet but I'm sticking with PSP.

Dave, go with Photoshop Elements 6. The most important difference between PE 6 and Photoshop is that Photoshop does not let you work in, or save in CYMK mode (Cyan, Magenta, yellow, or black) that is the format used for commercial printing. Photoshop Elements is Photoshop adapted for use with a home printer and the Web. If you go this way, you should look at a book Photoshop Elements 6 the Missing Manual by Barbra Brundige.as the definitive guide to the product


My 0.02¢

Cheers,

WesternGuy

Another vote for Elements. I haven't used it in awhile, but its a lot like the full version for about 1/10 the price. You can get a discount on the full version if you decide to get it later too.

My vote is also for Elements. I haven't used it since version 2, so I can't really comment on how version 6 is, but I'm sure it will serve your needs.

If you know any college students, you may want to look into the student version of software. My wife is going to college and she bought the full version of CS3 for me for Christmas. With here student discount, it was less than $200.

There are only a few programs I would recommend: 1) Photo Shop line including elements 2) Gimp - the FREE Photo Shop, very steep learning curve. 3) Paint Shop pro. and last # 4) the free online photo editor Paint.Net.

I also use Thumbs Plus which has some editing built in. and with a old version of Photo Shop 5.0LE and I personally have not needed more powerful programs.

My vote is also for Elements. I haven't used it since version 2, so I can't really comment on how version 6 is, but I'm sure it will serve your needs.

If you know any college students, you may want to look into the student version of software. My wife is going to college and she bought the full version of CS3 for me for Christmas. With here student discount, it was less than $200.


What you said. My wife is a college professor and she hooked me up with CS3 Web Premium, Corel X4 Graphics Suite, Lightroom, and Eye Candy this year. Adobe products are still expensive -- but our income tax rebate and economic incentive had to go someplace! :thumbsup:

mbb

I just realized the photoshop cs3 doesn't save to cmyk. I can change the mode to CYMK, but it still saves as a jpeg. Wow, didn't know that and I've been working with PS for a long time.

I just realized the photoshop cs3 doesn't save to cmyk. I can change the mode to CYMK, but it still saves as a jpeg. Wow, didn't know that and I've been working with PS for a long time.

I don't know anything about CMYK other than it's used for printing, but are there any other settings that are incompatible with this? For example, if you're in 16-bit you can't save as a JPEG, etc.

I just realized the photoshop cs3 doesn't save to cmyk. I can change the mode to CYMK, but it still saves as a jpeg. Wow, didn't know that and I've been working with PS for a long time.

Are you trying to save a file with a .cmyk file extension? I just changed the mode to CMYK in a .jpeg and saved it. The jpeg saved the CMYK color profile.

As mike said, CMYK is simply a color mode, just like RGB and Grayscale. Instead of saving images broken up into Red, Green, and Blue channels like RGB, or just black levels like grayscale, it separates into Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black channels.

The file itself is still saved as a JPEG, TIFF, PSD, or other normal file format.

Thanks all for your input.

I was using GIMP but it had a hick-up and set my system so that I could only open my pics in GIMP.

I downloaded the 30 day trial version of Elements and it really seems to do the job. Cost me a gig of storage but what the heck.

Thanks to all for your input which made my decision much easier.

The thing about any version of Photoshop (Elements, etc) is that it's the most familiar one out there to most photographers. I'm not using it at the moment (have Capture NX) but may pick up Elements anyway - because I have been using different versions of Photoshop for several years. There are also a lot of books on what to do with it, including some really great ones by Scott Kelby. Most other software (including Capture NX that I have) doesn't have a whole lot written by users about it.

Without my experience in Photoshop (much of it which was started by reading non-Adobe issued material), Capture NX would have been more difficult to learn.

I saw sealed (never opened) photoshop CS3's on ebay for under $250. I would personally save up to get the full version becasue when you want to begin advanced editing elements lacks some tools that will make your life much much easier.