Adobe Photodeluxe 2.0 [Old Version]

by Adobe

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00001YVFK
• Item model number: 18101020
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 24, 1999
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,733 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Adobe PhotoDeluxe 2.0 offers a fast and easy way to modify and personalize your photos. It performs a variety of tasks, including red-eye removal and shadow dropping. Smudging and cloning are popular digital tools that feature an easy-to-use interface. Import your photographs from disks, scanners, or digital cameras with seamless ease. PhotoDeluxe was designed with both the novice and professional photo editor in mind.

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PhotoDeluxe, the consumer image editing offering from Adobe, lets you retouch, manipulate, and otherwise twist digital photos for cheap - once you understand the unusual (yet improved) interface. Keep in mind the price and the phrase "consumer offering;" it's the basis for why Adobe made PhotoDeluxe so different from other Mac applications.

Forget about menus, and don't even think about a floating tool palette. PhotoDeluxe's interface looks more like a Web browser or a Macromedia Director interface than a Mac app. The program takes over your screen, adding its own background and putting up a series of buttons and tabs. These are designed to walk you through specific tasks (say, making a greeting card out of a family photo), instead of letting you work in a free-form environment with a bunch of tools and a palette. Adobe spent a lot of time analyzing what consumers want from digital photos and how they go about getting it. The company adjusted PhotoDeluxe to reflect what it learned.

The five buttons on the left side of the screen - Get Photo, Special Effects, Cards & More, Internet, and Send - appear in the order in which you most likely will need them. First get a photo, then touch it up, make something with it, and send it (either through the Internet or to the hard drive). Once you become accustomed to working in this fashion, the interface makes a lot of sense, but it's a tough transition for dyed-in-the-wool Adobe Photoshop users. Then again, PhotoDeluxe does not purport to replace Photoshop.

PhotoDeluxe 2.0 doesn't tie you to choosing between guided activities and free-form work, as PhotoDeluxe 1.0 did. Instead, clicking on a button brings up some tabs that contain tools arranged in a step-by-step order, without mandating that order. The addition of the Advanced button lets you access some of the more familiar (and potent) Photoshop tools. There is some serious power here - Adobe uses lots of Photoshop code in PhotoDeluxe.

PhotoDeluxe 2.0's great new features include red-eye removal; a Clone tool (for duplicating parts of an image); editable, rotatable, and sizable text; and several photo manipulation tools. These features, especially the Clone tool addition, make PhotoDeluxe 2.0 much richer than version 1.0. Of course, some other additions, such as image management, aren't so great. PhotoDeluxe uses the EasyPhoto Organizer, which catalogs files in galleries. The problem is that the gallery files included with PhotoDeluxe point to images on the PhotoDeluxe CD, so unless the CD is in the drive, the sample photos and clip art are not accessible.

Another downside, PhotoDeluxe takes up a lot of hard disk space. A minimal install occupies more than 70MB of space, and that does not include the photo galleries included with the program. Also, it takes some time to get used to opening and saving files using galleries.

PhotoDeluxe is not Photoshop. Repeat this mantra if you are a Photoshop user picking up PhotoDeluxe 2.0. It will be a frustrating experience. If, however, you're new to digital images and simply want to play around with pictures, PhotoDeluxe will suffice, especially for the $49 price tag. - David Reynolds

Good News: Easy photo manipulation. Includes Photoshop tools. Good step-by-step procedures. Great power for the price.

Bad News: Interface is a real departure from the Mac standard. Sucks up lots of hard disk space.

Rating:3/4

©1999 MacAddict

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars PS, January 7, 2003

By 

Cindy Alexander (Athens, GA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adobe Photodeluxe 2.0 [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

I just wanted to add that a lot of the reviews in this section are for different software! Versions of photodeluxe 2.0 are different for PC's and Mac's!! The Mac's version 2.0 is comparable to photodeluxe 4.0 for PC, which is known to have a lot of "bugs" in it. Version 2.0 for PC is a much better version than 4.0...don't fix what is not broken!! So, please if you are a PC user thinking about purchasing version 2.0, ignore the comments about the Mac version as they do not apply to you. :o)

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not compatible with OS9!, July 23, 2001

By 

Scrapbooker - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adobe Photodeluxe 2.0 [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

Please. If you have Mac OS9 beware! My Mac freezes every time I try to use this software and I have spent hours trying to resolve the problem. Be sure to review the user group entries on Adobe's website before buying this software! You will find many frustrated OS9 users and no solutions. GOTO ...(their website). Enter search and enter "PhotoDeluxe OS9."

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SO user friendly, December 19, 2002

By 

Howard L Lambert (Lemoore, California United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Adobe Photodeluxe 2.0 [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

Adobe has been perfecting their software for way over a decade, so no wonder they're so high quality and easy to use.

Like their high end [...] software, this title uses a very easy and functional layering system.

I use it, not only for photos, but for illustration and graphics purposes, too. Just scan your line drawing in and, like a coloring book, fill in the white areas with color or textures. It comes with a bunch of cool effects buttons, so you can then add those as well.

It crashes sometimes, but usually only when using the "advanced" buttons and bogging your RAM down with a ton of effects and commands. Just be sure to get in the universally good habit of saving often, and there won't be much of a problem.

I actually prefer version 2 to version 4 because of a more user friendly interface, but don't try to run version 2 on WinXP.