On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 14:51:50 -0500, Tom Nelson
wrote:
In article , tacit
wrote:
In article ,
Mort wrote:
As a newcomer to Photoshop do I need the latest version of photoshop or could I save some money by looking for an earlier version and get results as good as I would with the latest version?
I would suggest you save a lot of money and get Photoshop Elements.
I agree with your premise, but there are some errors in what you’ve said.
You should know that full Photoshop and PSE have very different philosophies and customer bases. Full PS is aimed at creative professionals who will learn it in depth and who are interested in its many productivity-enhancing features. PSE is aimed at amateurs who are more casual in their use of it and who value its many canned hand-holding or automated features. Here are a couple of examples:
1. PSE expects that you will have your entire photo collection on your hard drive.
That’s not so. I have both Photoshop V7 and Elements 5.0 on my computer. I normally use PS7, but I have E5.0 because my daughter uses it and she occasionally asks me questions on how to do something.
I have a CD from her with images she took. I just opened an image from that CD (without moving the image to my hard drive), edited it, and did a SAVE AS to my computer. No problem.
Elements
allows you to view photos with the shooting date as a caption, but will not show the file name.
Just checked. I opened Organizer and then went to an image already in Organizer. The screen shows the date and time the image was taken and the name of the file as (name).jpg.
In contrast, full Photoshop expects you to have a fluid workflow in which you add new folders of photos and archive others and remove them from your hard drive. It makes no assumptions about the filenames and makes it easy to rename folders and individual photos
In Elements, just click File>Rename and do it.
You can attach
keywords to your photos and search for them, but PS assumes you will use your own logic about the folder system you use (by job? by subject? by date?) and to navigate that file structure to find the photos you want. Full PS is set up to show large numbers of photos at a time.
I don’t have experience at this because I don’t use Elements except when I doing something that I want to explain to my daughter. (I do screenshots as I go along and email her the screenshots)
Elements doesn’t have the File>Browse feature that Photoshop has. However, I don’t use this in PS. I use a viewer (FastStone) and tab back and forth.
In answer to your original question, I don’t think you need the latest version of Photoshop, CS3. Instead, you should think about what you want out of a graphics program, how much time you’re willing to spend with it (learning it and keeping current with it) and how much control you want of the look of your images. If you want to go with full PS, get CS2 (the older CS did not have the Bridge). If you prefer Elements, you’ll save a lot of money and have an easier time learning to use it.
As a last point, there are usually courses on Elements around at the Community Colleges or the county technical schools. I’ve signed up for one next month that is a one day course on a Saturday with a cost of $40. I just missed a three-day course for $75. When you consider the average PS or E book is $30/$50, the course price is reasonable.
I’ve been using Photoshop for years (though not as a professional or as someone employed in graphics), but thought a crash course in the use of the Elements system of Organizer, Tags, Stacks, Collections, etc would be helpful. I’ve never seen a local, inexpensive, Photoshop course.
I don’t intend to use Elements in place of Photoshop, but I do like working with my daughter in her learning curve.
—
Tony Cooper
Orlando, FL