Photoshop vs Elements

[Penguin]

Hi, I getting tired of the cost of upgrading Photoshop. But I just upgraded to an Intel Mac Pro and I either pay $199 to upgrade CS2 to CS3 or I can get elements. Does anyone have any experience with both - where would Elements 4.0 line compared to Photoshop 6 or 7 or CS or .... ?

Thanks
Brian

[AlphaDog]

FYI, Elements for the Mac isn't yet available in uni-bin. It may never be at the rate things are going.

If you need to get away from running Adobe under Rosetta, PS is the only way to do it right now. I never upgraded my Elements from 3.0, because I kept waiting for them to come out with a version for my Intel iMac. I'm still waiting.

[Blankity Blank]

Elements 6 for the Mac hits early next year.

And there are UB image editors like Acorn out there. How they match up to Elements or Photoshop, I don't know.

[MartyStickle]

Hey, Blankity Blank...where did you get the info about elemnets 6? I'm really interested in getting it. Think there will be an upgrade plan for 5 owners?

[AlphaDog]

[quote MartyStickle]Hey, Blankity Blank...where did you get the info about elemnets 6? I'm really interested in getting it. Think there will be an upgrade plan for 5 owners?
I think they'd have to produce Elements 5.0 for the Mac first. There's a PSE 5.0 for Windows users, but Adobe never released that one for Macs; the newest Mac version is 4.0, which is getting very long in the tooth.

Historically, there's never been much of an upgrade deal for Elements on either platform. I've gotten rebates on a couple of mine, because I owned a previous version, but all of the programs are standalones. A good sale results in a better deal from a financial standpoint.

The information about Elements 6.0 for the Mac is available from the link in Blankity Blank's post, the cute blue words.

[wickedsteve]

I use Photoshop 7 at work and Elements 4 at home. There are very few features in Pshop that Elements does not have. I can't even think of oe right now. But if you can try out Elements for a few days you will know if there is anything missing that you need. Elements has layers and even automation now. I tink guide lines might be missing.

[Ombligo]

We use PS at my work on roughly 200 macs, I've been suggesting that we switch most of the units to elements when the next non-included upgrade comes along. We barely touch the surface of what PS does. It would save a great deal of money.

[MitchJi]

Hi,

Pixelmator sounds good (check this review):
http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/creative.../index.php

Two excerpts:
"In the first part of “Image editors for the rest of us,” I covered two programs at opposite ends of the spectrum. One newly released image editor, Acorn, doesn’t go for flash or overloaded features, but its simplicity means that it does its tasks very well. Pixel, on the other hand, tries to do everything, but in my opinion, it fails at an unacceptable number of tasks. For me, the sweet spot is Pixelmator, which was just released this week.

Pixelmator, developed by brothers Saulius and Aidas Dailide, is a fantastic layers-based image editor that uses Apple’s Core Image to work much of its magic. With over 20 selection tools, 15 color-correction tools, 50 filters, and support for over 100 file formats including PSD, TIF, JPG, EPS and PDF, Pixelmator is poised to fill the void between high-end Photoshop and streamlined editing applications like Acorn.

The obvious comparison is, of course, to Photoshop. With full support for layers, blend modes, gradients, brushes, metadata and ColorSync, it’s hard not to compare Pixelmator with Photoshop. But I really think it should be compared to Adobe’s Photoshop Elements, if anything.

Because Pixelmator doesn’t yet support CMYK color spaces, Camera RAW formats, drop shadows or any of the other layer effects found in Photoshop (all of which are on the slate for future releases, according to the developers), you can’t really expect to use it on a professional level day-in and day-out. But, in my three-week test of Pixelmator, I was blown away with its features, speed, stability and utterly stunning good looks...."


"Pixelmator certainly isn’t for everyone, but, in my opinion, it could easily be for many of us, especially if it evolves quickly and smartly. For a Version 1.0 product, Pixelmator is already better than any other image editor outside of Photoshop, and that includes Photoshop Elements. With the developers already working on adding more features, and a very reasonable $59 price tag, it has the promise to join programs like Panic’s Transmit, St. Clair Software’s Default Folder and Titanium’s Software’s Onyx as Mac user favorites.

Of course, not everyone needs all the bells and whistles Pixelmator has to offer. But at just a few dollars more than Acorn, it’s worth the money just in case you grow into it..."

Mitch

[SteveO]

I have Elements 2 on 10.4.6...it works great for my needs. $20 on fleabay a year or two ago. Pixelmator sounds like a great program. Unfortunate name, though.

[MacManMaz]

Elements 4.0 on an intel iMac runs Ok, but a little flakey with the occasional unexpected quit. It really burns me to see updates come out for windows and never an update for the mac version.

Hopefully, those people at adobe will become a little more responsive to our needs as more and more macs show up on the desktop.