Adobe Photoshop Elements 15 - Good for AP?

[Icearcher (Chris)]

Hi All

Question for all the AP editors out there.

Wanting to start dipping my toes into AP and noticed elements is on special for the next few days.

Is it worth getting for AP? are there a lot of limitations with it? Is it going to be missing things that AP really needs?

Any input would be great.

Regards
Chris

[glend (Glen)]

You will get all sorts of opinions on what is best to use. There is a group that prefers Pixinsight, but it can be challenging for AP beginners. Photoshop is perhaps more intuitive if you come from a DSLR background. Of the various Photoshop resources, the most fully featured (at the moment) seems to be the Photoshop CC 2017 release which an online subscription ($9.95 AUD a month), included in the subscription you get access to PS Lightroom and Camera RAW as well. It is cost effective if you wish to learn Photoshop and has more capability than the Element versions. Longer term, over a year or so, it might be better to buy the app license if you can afford the outlay. Comparatively, other processing packages can be cheaper than Photoshop (latest version), but require a different approach.
Try a few trial versions and see which one suits you best.

[RB (Andrew)]

Originally Posted by Icearcher

Hi All

Question for all the AP editors out there.

Wanting to start dipping my toes into AP and noticed elements is on special for the next few days.

Is it worth getting for AP? are there a lot of limitations with it? Is it going to be missing things that AP really needs?

Any input would be great.

Regards
Chris

Adobe PS Elements has most of the features you'll need to get started.
I use Photoshop because it has the features I need but I believe Elements should be good to start dipping into AP.
My workflow is that I start with DSS for stacking my files then export it to PS to finish off.

Lots of good basic tutorials on PS for AP so it should be easy enough to replicate the steps in Elements.

Also, Elements is good to have anyway and if it's on special then I wouldn't hesitate.

Hope that helps.
Cheers
RB

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

My suggestion would be PaintShopPro.
Much cheaper than PS and the same functionality.
Trial versions available.

[Zuts]

Hi,

I am interested as well, but specifically in the version being asked about Adobe Photoshop Elements 15. This package is now available in the microsoft store at a 40 % discount which may be the reason for the initial post.

Cheers
Paul

[Renato1 (Renato)]

When the topic of Photoshop versus Photoshop Elements used to pop up at Dpreview.com years ago, the purists would always point out that Photoshop Elements was inferior as it did eight-bit processing versus the 16 bit processing of Photoshop (or some such, my memory of the figures may be incorrect). I don't know if that is still the case.

There were lots of books written about using Photoshop for astrophotography, and they were using older versions of Photoshop, when it was a stand-alone program. If you are using such a book, it shouldn't be too hard to find the same software at certain sites on the internet - though the learning curve would still be big.

As for me, I'm still using Photoshop Elements 7 for fixing my photos. I did buy a cheap copy of Photoshop Elements 12 a year or so ago at Harvey Norman, but haven't gotten around to installing it yet.
Regards,
Renato.