Customer Reviews

Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 (Mac) [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

I've had it for a couple of days now, but there are a number of things about PE4 that make the transition from version 3 to 4 needlessly difficult, not to mention if you get PE4 first.

The main change involves the use of "Bridge" to handle what the Browser function did previously. Unfortunately, it seems there are some missing planks in their Bridge, as it's like having 2 separate programs attempt to talk to hand off files to each other. It is clunky, not intuitive at all, and often doesn't work in a consistent way, even when you figure it out.

According to Adobe Technical Help [when you can reach them through 3 or 4 layers of sales beforehand], there is no "Organizer" for Mac that comes with the Windows version, and they were surprised at a number of missing elements in this version as a result. It also seems that they've tried to piggyback an existing full Photoshop program--Bridge--onto the back of Elements, which despite appearances, is a completely different program.

Another example: the Adjust Shadows/Highlights--which allows you to correct for things in shadows, or too bright...buried in a 3rd level menu...has been changed from the PE3 default of "50% lighten" to a "25% lighten" with no ability to change that preset. So everytime you want to adjust your picture, you have to push the slider back to 0% and start out there to see what's best for your photo. Clearly Adobe recognized their 50% preset was too much for most, and changed it--but left off the ability of the user to preset what works best for us. What's the solution to this or any other inflexible/confusing issue? I was told several times that if I wanted things to work better, I should buy the full Photoshop.

That is simply unacceptable, especially for a company of Adobe's size and history of working primarily on the Mac platform. I would rather have fewer features that work more reliably and straightforward, especially involving putting our most used features on a toolbar instead of being forced to grab them out of deep menus everytime.

In Bridge, they are trying to combine a number of features found in iPhoto, such as rating photos by stars, making it more flexible. However, they don't allow you to customize your displays or views enough to be efficient, much less easy to deal with. The speed of Bridge, and especially interacting with 4, is slow. Also particularly irksome is the lack of sensitivity/responsiveness of the sliders within PE4, i.e. brush size and opacity.

So far, I'm not impressed with the Magic Selection Tool, one of the main reasons I wanted to upgrade. It doesn't seem to grab things as efficiently as advertised, although it is better than just the Magic Wand 3 had. I'm also less than impressed with another new feature: Adjust Skin Tone, something that could be a big time saver while offering the improvements most people care about.

The combined Help program is overly detailed in some regards, yet leaves out big chunks of the program for you to guess at solutions. They have virtually no tutorials or overviews of the program specifically for the Mac version.

I will update this review as I use it more, but I would caution against jumping at this upgrade until they work out more of the kinks in the interface, unless you are a virtual pro and don't mind spending a lot of time figuring things out that aren't quite Ready For Primetime yet. What I look to PE for is something that allows more extensive editing than iPhoto6 has, and yet doesn't have the complexity or cost of the graphics standard Photoshop.

Whether because of the Mac platform changing to Intel chips, or friction between the companies, it seems Adobe is heading in the wrong direction on the Mac platform, making us seem once again like the red-haired stepchild in the computer world, while still charging the same as the Windows versions.

I'm always reluctant to upgrade any Adobe products and the upgrades from Elements 2 to 3 to 4 have been no different. I upgraded to 4 simply because 3 would not run when we switched to Tiger on our Quicksilver. 3 would run fine on two Powerbooks with the same flavor of Tiger, but not on the Quicksilver (???).

For the amateur, Elements is an excellent, if not superb, photo editor. For maintaining web sites, its very strong with the right set of tools for batch processing. While the tools are not as extensive as competing products, Elements just burns right through the job much faster than any other program I've used.

The user experience is the problem and, in my belief, a big one. It looks like garbage on the screen, right out of Windows. Tiny icons, disorganized, completely different windows handling (close, hide, etc) than any other Mac app and dreadfully lousy as a result. Error messages that make no sense are the norm (just repeat what you tried to do in the first place and it will likely work).

I use Elements for a very restricted set of requirements: some editing, reordering in the browser and batch renaming. For every day use, I don't go near it. Graphic Converter. Cheaper, easier to use, Mac interface, bullet proof code and lively response as opposed to Elements taking forever to open and balks at the slighest provocation. And, Elements can and does crash or is Force Quitted at times.

Quite frankly, understand your criteria. I've been using Elements 2, 3 and now 4 for about 5 years now and believe iPhoto or any of the software that comes with digital cameras is better for casual use and GraphicConverter for more demanding use.

I was disappointed when I discovered that I could not use Elements version 4.0 on my new Mac 10.4.8. I had to return it and got credit for it. Photoshop Elements does not seem to compatible with Intel duo core processors in these new Macs. Apparently Adobe has not made it usable yet for this new Mac. When I ordered it, I read that it worked for 10.4, which was not the whole truth.
Dorothy Bausch

Bought Elements 4.0 to go with my brand new dual core iMac. After about a week it crashed and without going through the bloody details, Apple Support referred me to Adobe. The Adobe troubleshooting "system errors or freezes" page indicates that well, Elements 4.0 may not be quite compatible with the new iMacs and gives 14 fixes, some easy, some laborious, none of which worked for me and to add insult to injuy, attempts to contact Adobe by their on line chat and telephone turned into excercises in more frustration.

I upgraded from Version 2 to 4 since version 3 was never sold for Macs. Frankly, the few improvements I've encountered weren't worth the price of the product. I find the new "browser" function clumsy and it apparently requires an internet connect to be fully functional. Too much bother. The "Red-Eye" tool failed miserably in auto-mode so I was back to doing the version 2 procedure. The "repair tool" is the best improvement but it's still not very automatic. I still use Elements for major photo repair, but the auto tools in iPhoto are much more impressive, especially the "straightening" tool, which is simple and straightforward. Since the auto-straighten tool in Elements only works sometime, I usually have to resort to a "custom rotate" and then a "crop" operation. That's all done in one step with iPhoto. [...]

I purchased a MacBook Pro recently and read the very mixed reviews on this program. Some people had a difficult time getting it to run on their Intel Based Macs.

The other reviews had me nervous. The software installed like it was supposed to and I've already used it to play with some photos I have residing on my iDisk. I used the Bridge to select the shots I wanted to experiment with. The Bridge also worked like it was supposed to.

After I installed the program some very large updates were offered and I instaled them promptly. Perhaps the updates addressed some of the problems mentioned by prior reviewers.

So far so good is all I can say right now. I'm giving it a "4", and will be back later on to add to my reiview.

I'm no techie geek, so I cannot say why I am having no problems. My computer is a MacBook Pro with 1 GB of RAM running at 2.16 Mega herz running OS 10.4.10

I'd say go ahead and buy it for your Mac. You'll be fine!

I will update my review once I've gotten more familier with the program

This product is an after thought for the mac. The PC version is a more fully integrated product. Realistically this product is a waste of money when run on a mac if compared to it run on a PC. The "bridge" app is cumbersome at best. Iphoto has nothing to fear. Its a shame considering the PC version is by far the best photo management software available for the hobbyist.

This is my first use of any PhotoShop product and I am not very impressed. I edit (retouch and then resize) hundreds of outdoor photos for slideshows and make extensive use of the Auto Smart Fix feature (it usually gives me what I want first try)but when I try to use the batch process feature to do 200 image file 50 images at a time (for Smart Fix or Resize to new folder)Elements 4 is hopeless. The batch processor scrambles the order of the output and it can take hours to unscramble them. Best not to even use this feature unless you are working with very small batches.
I found it imposssible to email Adobe Support for any suggestions from them on this problem so I am going to look elsewhere for the batch processing capability I want.

I bought the elements ready to take on my photo library and have fun editing. Unfortunately, after photoshop successfully and easily organized my photos, the rest was downhill. If you're in the market for a photo organizer, this is a great product, but if you want to edit photos in ANY way, don't get your hopes up. It is exhaustingly clumsy! It's editing functions are not user friendly, are slow, and it even freezes regularly while editing. I give this 2 stars for it's organizing capabilities and 0 stars for it's editing capabilities. I'll probably try a few other products or keep this one for organizing and use another for editing until someone gets it right.

For "the rest of us" who don't really need all the power of PhotoShop, this is a great product. I hope they bring out a universal binary soon.

For much of what I need, Auto Smart Fix does the job. Sure, I could hand tweak it and get it a little better, but what a time saver!

Ease of use, good price... I'm a fan.