Others say...

"Compatibility isssue"
I took a class to learn how to use the product. Even with good instructors I found the software complicated. Now I've made peace with it and would like to transfer it from my laptop XP (that I took to class)to my new Dell Desktop running Vista. Nope. Adobe offers a patch to make 5.0 compatible but not 4.0 and apparently does not plan to do so.

"Slow"
Compared to Photoshop Elements 2.0, this product is 5x slower. Not sure why a company would ship a product that regresses speed as this one does. It must have been something that benefitted Adobe, because it sure does not benefit me. Inexplicable.

"A must have"
This is the next step up for the more serious digital editor. I have been using this software for the last year and I still haven't used all the cool features. Slide shows are real nice, especially if you take pictures for a soccer, or any other team. Adding the music to the slideshow puts on the finishing touch.


"I'm happy with my purchase..."
At first I thought the product was a little overwhelming. All of the little little icons and functions seemed the same, but I worked my way through the manual and figured them out one by one.

I like the photoediting aspect of the software. You can do a quick-edit, too if the photo-editor seems too complicated. Both the quick edit and photoedit are highly nuanced, which is great if you don't want to make major changes to your photo's color, contrast or shadow.

You can alter the photos in lots of different ways and the effect can be surprisingly artistic. Once you get the maneuvering of the first few tools down, it is easy to learn the rest.

I have had good luck scanning photos and drawn pictures and layering the two together with the layering feature.

Problems: The main file gets HUMONGOUS and is slow to load. I think sometimes files get lost-and then will show up later as two files.

This is my first photo-editing software and overall I am happy with it. :)

"stick to photo editing"
Adobe Premier Elements 4 has excellent image editing capability. Most consumers will find all the functionality they need in Elements, without needing to step up to the more elaborate functionality in the full version of Photoshop. Five stars for the image editing portion of the package.

However, Elements also has some other capabilities that might attract consumers. For instance, it can act as a photo organizer and allow you to make nifty slideshows. This sounds great, but there are some issues.

First, all the info you put into the organizer is stored in a "catalog" file. This file therefore gets very large and is easily corrupted, partially due to the way Adobe sets it up to be shared (see below).

If any of your photos are moved around outside of the program, it will lose track of them. Next time you open the program, it will find them in their new location, and now will think there are 2 copies. Actually, it knows the old one is gone, but instead of deleting it from the catalog, it shows up with a "missing file" icon. Move files around a few times and soon you will have so many missing copies that you will want to delete the whole catalog and start over. But this would be a very bad idea, since the catalog also contains any "creations" you have made, such as slideshows. Don't ask me why you can't save a slideshow as a separate file, to be edited later. You can only "export" to non-editable formats for sharing with others (such as PDF or WMV).

It appears Adobe is not very familiar with the Windows operating system. In Windows, each user has their own set of folders. That's why the "My Documents" folder contains only my documents, not those of other users. But for some reason, Adobe puts the precious catalog file in the "All Users Documents" to be shared by everyone. Besides the annoyance of everyone editing the same catalog, this makes it easier to corrupt the file.

It isn't easy to figure all this out, because this level of functionality is hidden from the user. The Elements package apparently assumes you the user don't know how to use your computer, and doesn't want to confuse you with such difficult topics as file locations. I suppose that's why the default option when importing pictures to the catalog is to modify your photos to eliminate red eye. It's nice to have that function available, but I don't like my software's defaults to be to modify my source files.

One star for the photo album and "creation" portion of the package.