Customer Reviews
Great photo editing
I bought a new digital SLR camera and wanted to augment it with some good photo editing software. Initially, I leaned toward Adobe due to general Microsoft wariness. But I've experimented with Photo Shop in the past and it's just too confusing and detailed for my tastes. I picked up Microsoft Digital Image Suite at Staples. It's so easy to use. I probably could have figured out the entire program without the full manual, but I'm glad I got the full manual because I liked the chapter on taking good photos. This is definitely an excellent program for people who will never use half the Adobe tools (ie everyone) but still want to edit their photos.
A product for the rest of us!
I have owned Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 for over a year now, and while parts of it are fairly intuitive, much of it requires you to dig pretty deep to figure out how things work. Slow load times and clunky integration don't help. I've just never gotten into the product. Not because I can't, but because I just don't have the desire. I'm not a professional photographer, I just want to make a few edits (redeye, etc.), share with family/friends, and print the ones I like the most. Maybe I'll print a card or some other project from time to time, but nothing heavy. Adobe has a ton of features, but I'm convinced that 90%+ of those with digital cameras are like me, rather than looking for a cheap alternative to Photoshop.^M
Ok, but not worth the upgrade
I am a long time user of Digital Image and find it to do almost everything I need. When I saw that the new suite version for 2006 had panaramic stitching, I decided to upgrade from version 9. I was disapointed with the stitching. It was easy, but left with poor results. Rather than match up the seems well (like I am used to with Canon Photo Stitch), it gets indecisive and leaves a semi-transparent ghost image of both sides of the stitch. From a distance it looks good; at closer inspection it has a real cheasy double-image effect. If you have version 9 or 10, skip this upgrade.
