Customer Reviews

Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 Premiere Elements 3.0 Bundle [OLDER VERSION]

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

This is quality software.

- It has the right feature set. No superfluous stuff like backup software and DVD duplication software, as is the case with Roxio MyDVD9.

- The user interface is simple and intuitive enough that I was able to start creating a DVD from multiple video clips of our baby that I had scattered around. I didn't use the help file, I just installed it and started. I only referred to the manual for advanced functions.

- And advanced functions it certainly has. I like the ability to create multiple audio and video tracks separately and blend them together. I like using Photoshop Elements to create slide shows in my DVDs by porting them to Premiere Elements with a click - it's simple, cleaner and quicker than any other product.

- The output stage where one encodes a DVD is simple and reliable. I have a relatively slow PC, and certainly didn't want any error messages coming up several hours into an encoding job for creating an hour-long DVD.

- The integration between Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements goes more than skin deep. They share the same user interface, and one can send pictures and videos from one package to the other.

- It has never crashed, even in Windows.

Our photo and video editing softwares were both very basic and "old", so we decided to upgrade a couple of months ago. After reading many reviews on different bundles, we decided to get the Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 Premiere Elements 3.0 bundle. We've played around with the Premiere Elements a bit, and it's really awesome. Much better than the Pinnacle Studio 8 we had before. All the basic functions are easy to use and very intuitive, though we haven't gone and figured out the more advanced features yet. The Photoshop Elements is a wonderful tool, as well. We recently had to scan in a lot of old pictures (as in 20+ year old b/w photographs). They needed a lot of touching up, and Elements 5.0 worked wonderfully for that. I could adjust the lighting and sharpening, fix the colors and scratches, and the pictures turned out amazing. You'd never be able to tell they were scanned images from such old photographs. The program is also very intuitive. I could do all the things I wanted to do without having to read the manual. Of course, I'm still just touching on the surface of what all is possible, and I plan on reading the manual and studying the program in more detail once I have the time to do so, but for what I need right now, it's easy to use and does a good job. There are only two things I have to comment on that I don't like about the Adobe bundle, and they are the reason why I'm giving 4 stars instead of 5.
1. The stated minimum requirements for this bundle are 512MB RAM. That's what we had on our computer, and while the program worked, it was so painfully slow that it wasn't feasible to really use it. We ended up upgrading to 1GB, and it's been working great since. So if you have less than 1GB RAM, make sure you upgrade before getting this software!
2. The red-eye fix in Photoshop Elements, or lack thereof. There is an auto red-eye fix, but it doesn't work very well. It finds red eyes in all kinds of places, just not where they actually are. Sometimes it covers half the face, sometimes only half of the eye, etc. etc. etc. There is an option to manually show the program where the red eye is, but it still doesn't work right. Maybe there's another trick I haven't found out about yet, but as of right now, I usually give the fix tool a shot, and if it doesn't work I take the picture back into my old editing software and fix the red eye there. I'm really very disappointed with this, as fixing red eyes is something you have to do quite frequently when editing pictures.
Overall, the software has been very easy and fun to work with, even for an amateur like me. :o) If Adobe can adjust the minimum requirements recommendation and fix the red-eye fix tool, it's going to definitely deserve 5 points.

I started with Adobe Elements Photoshop 3 and Premier 1. This is my 2nd upgrad. My computer is 2 years old and I'm glad I bought Pentium 4 with a lot of RAM and hard drive. This upgrade is great. Major improvement from Elements 4&2. If you used Premier 2 extensively you will find that this upgrade will make your work much easier. An iprovement to axccess all menues, love the new time line (now it has two time lines were you can switch between them, the old one + the new one were you can go to each scene in a click. You can narrate directly to your timeline. I tried my USB mic, it did not work. I read a little and tried my old serial mic, it worked beautifuly. During narration, premier will add a new audio segment in the timeline. The best way is to turn off the sound and used headphone to hear your video and narrate during playback, otherwise you'll get an echo (you'll be recording your voice and the playback at the same time).
Major improvement in photoshop too.
Just double check system requirement before purchasing. It is worth upgrading your copmuter to take advantage of these programs.

I haven't had an opportunity to try Premiere Elements thoroughly, so this review is based on Photoshop only.

I wanted a new photo editing program to replace Micrografx 7, which I'd had for years. One thing I wanted was a larger selection of automated features. Every week I take pictures of animals for the Humane Society, and I wanted decent shots without spending hours fixing common problems (poor lighting, green and yellow eyes, etc.). I also had gotten a lot of old family photos that I wanted to restore, but there were too many to manually fix every flaw. While the Auto Smart Fix isn't perfect, it frequently gets a shot good enough for my needs with a single click. If that doesn't do what I need, there are plenty of other tools (both automated and manual) for color, lighting etc. It would have taken hours to touch up some of my old color photos without features like "Remove Color Cast" and "Adjust Color For Skin Tone." I've also found the Spot Healing Brush is a great tool for fixing dust and scratches without adjusting the whole photo and sacrificing image quality.

In addition to automated fixes, I wanted more advanced features for fine tuning. Tools like Auto Smart Fix are a great starting point, especially when the picture doesn't need to be perfect, but it rarely gets a really special picture as good as it could be. One of those tools was layers. I've tried working with layers in another program, and PSE was far superior. It's also very easy to fine-tune colors without spending a lot of time. When I'm not in a hurry, I can almost always discover something new that helps me to take my pictures to a new level.

Overall, I'm very pleased with PSE 5.0. However, I didn't give it 5 stars, largely because it lacks toolbar shortcuts for tasks like "Undo" and "Open" that were available in PSE 4.0. This isn't a big deal for me because I prefer the Undo History palette over the shortcut, and I like to use Ctrl+O or the File Menu instead of the Open shortcut. These omissions don't seem to make any sense, though, and they could be very annoying for some people. There are also fewer Sharpen tools than in 4.0, though I've found what remains is usually sufficient. There are some nice new features that version 4.0 lacked, such as "Convert to Black & White," but these aren't enough to justify an upgrade. Many people would probably be happier with the older version, which is still available on Amazon.

If you don't have recent photo editing software, I highly recommend PSE 5.0. If you're satisfied with what you have, or if you already own PSE 4.0, save your money.

I am a longtime Photoshop user, and bought the Elements bundle to be able to do slideshows. After getting Photoshop Elements to get rid of red eye, I exported the photos to Premier Elements. Once it burned my DVD, all of the photos were gone from my system; the DVD images were very fuzzy (and I had selected the highest resolution and had plenty of disc space left over).

I am very disappointed in these products, and would caution others in using them. If you do, be sure to work from copies of your photos (which I did fortunately).

I would easily give this software 5 stars by itself, but I simply wanted to write this review to tell anyone considering it that Adobe will NOT honor your rebate. The first reply they sent me was that I was missing one of the proofs of purchase. Luckily, I had taken pictures of the box and all of the receipts, so I sent them these pictures along with copies of all of the receipts. I then received a 2nd notice saying that the receipt is from an "unqualified store" which I can only assume means Amazon.com.

Great software though. Just figured I would warn everyone.

I initially purchased Creator 9 to do the same thing this software does, but the only thing is it didnt hang my computer when it came down to burn the DVD. This software is pretty much easy to use, comes with two (Bibles) manuals, plenty of information in there to creat some good videos. I recommend buying this or you can always buy Creator 9 have it crash your system and then spend a few days trying to review other products out there that have gotten good reviews such as this one. You will be happy with the videos you make. You can make a video containing still images (pictures), video from camcorder camera or from your computer, add text in the movies, add background music, its awesome. I must say again it wont hang your system. Please get it, your family and yourself wont be disappointed.

Great Product and very feature rich for its price. However be careful there is a SERIOUS performance issue when you add Transitions. Screen actions then take an average 30 seconds. Pls see Adobe User Forums link below. Adobe call it a design "feature" and refuse to fix it. You have to use Video 2 track to avoid slowdown. Note that the Sceneline uses Video 1 by default and when you move all the dat to Video 2 Sceneline compreeses all the images into one image and becomes useless.


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I believe this is probably the best of the photo organizers, though it is not perfect.
It is only because I took time to go through the learning curve that I feel I can make this claim. First it is very important to ensure your camera's date/time is correct, as this is the default sort order. You can manually change this once photos are imported, but it can be a little time consuming -- better to get this right upfront.

Be aware the Premere component requires a computer processor with SSE2 support, a feature not likely found in older CPU's. also, to make photo slideshows that play on a DVD you have to have the Premiere component. The standalone PSE can't do this. It is time consuming, but helped somewhat by automation, though I wish PSE would create a wizard that allowed me to set all parameters upfront and then I could go to bed and wake up with a completed DVD waiting in the morning. This is presently a two step process. I don't really use the Premiere Elements component, except for making slide shows on DVD.

I also wish it had the ability to change the photo order within a group of tags without having to create a collection. This would allow easier organization during a two camera shoot. I have to change the photos date presently to get it organized. Alternatly, I think the ability to sort on metadata other than datestamp would be useful.

The underlying photo organizer is based on the datestamp embedded in the metadata of the digital image. If you want a particular order, you have to create a collection.

Photoediting in ANY app is not simple. You have to take the time to learn it if you want really good results. Computers are just not there yet, though this tool covers most of the bases and does a pretty good job with the most common issues. PSE has tremendous power in it's Photo editing toolset. A third party book is essential if you want to get the most out of it.

But overall, this is probably the most robust consumer-grade photo organizing/editing tool out there. It is reasonably well supported and each version gets significantly better.

Overall, this software bundle is a great value, but there is a problem with Premiere Elements. The first time I used Premiere to make a movie, it would take a long time for the software to do even the simplest tasks such as editing text or changing the volume of a clip. I later found out that this is a bug. Fortunately, it can be fixed by moving the video from track one to track two (leaving track one blank). Somehow this solves the problem and everything works great.