Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 [OLD VERSION]

Other products by Adobe

Product Features

• Edit and enhance your photos easily and creatively with a variety of new tools
• Fix common photo flaws, touch up specific areas, and add special effects
• Show off photos with customizable slide shows, online photo albums, on your television, or through email
• Find and view photos easily, with multiple search and browse options
• Based on industry-leading, professional Adobe Photoshop technology

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000AP89JE
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 13, 2005
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (90 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,177 in Software (See Bestsellers in Software)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #5 in	Software > Home & Hobbies > Scrapbooking
  #70 in	Software > Graphics > Photo Editing

Product Description

From the Manufacturer
Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 software combines power and simplicity to help you do it all: Edit and enhance your photos, easily find and view them, and show off your creativity in countless ways. Fix common flaws instantly or use advanced options for more control. Keep every photo at your fingertips with flexible tagging, searching, and viewing options. And wow your family and friends with entertaining slide shows, photo mail, online photo albums, and much more.

Top Reasons to Upgrade to Photoshop Elements 4.0

• Entertain friends with a custom slide show. Create an entertaining slide show in minutes! Wow your audience with amazing transitions, pan and zoom effects, captions, music, and narration. Save in the format that works best for you.
• Quickly retouch specific areas. Easily select by brushing over any element of your photo to make a range of adjustments to a specific area or object.
• Say goodbye to red eye. Photoshop Elements now eliminates red eye automatically as you download photos from your camera. Or you can remove red eye from individual shots without even clicking on the photo.
• Share photos online. Easily upload your photos to a personal online album that can be updated with new photos at any time. Family and friends can view your photos and instantly order prints.
• Get realistic skin tones. Easily adjust skin tones for a more natural look, even in poorly lit photos.
• Easily isolate objects from backgrounds. Quickly separate an object from its background—even in complex, textured areas—and instantly remove rough edges.
• Find every face. Instantly find all of your photos that contain faces so you can tag photos of friends and family for easy sorting.
• Order prints online with one click. Turn your digital pictures into professional-quality Kodak prints with new one-click printing, or create a memorable hardbound photo book. Both are delivered directly to your door.
• View photos on your TV. Entertain a roomful of friends by showing photos and slide shows on your TV, either over a home network or from a video CD. Control the show using your TV remote. (For home networks: works with Media Center computers running Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005.)
• Know where your photos are. Already created folders on your hard drive? Easily access your photos and add, delete, or move folders using the Folder View.
• Be creative in less time. Start editing sooner with a quick-launching Editor mode.

Top Reasons to Get Photoshop Elements 4.0

• Do it all with one product. Edit, organize, and show your digital photos with one powerful yet easyto- use product.
• Make your photos look their best. Fix common flaws with a click and edit with less fuss, perfect your photos with advanced options, and have fun with artistic special effects.
• Show off your creativity. Share your photos in entertaining and creative ways. Use fun templates or customize the way you want.
• Find and view photos the way you want. Keep your photos at your fingertips with powerful and flexible tags, search options, and comparison tools.
• Use industry-leading technology. Create top-quality images with software based on industryleading Adobe Photoshop software. Professionals have relied on for more than a decade.

Product Description
Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 software combines power and simplicity to help you do it all: Edit and enhance your photos, easily find and view them, and show off your creativity in countless ways. Fix common flaws instantly or use advanced options for more control. Keep every photo at your fingertips with flexible tagging, searching, and viewing options. And wow your family and friends with entertaining slide shows, photo mail, online photo albums, and much more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

158 of 161 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Best photo editor in this price range but not worth upgrading from 3.0, November 1, 2005

By	M. Murphy (Broken Arrow, OK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I read many reviews for software. I always read the worst reviews first and take what people say with a grain of salt. In reading reviews for Photoshop Elements, I see many people giving this program lackluster reviews. Not based on the software's capability, but based on its lack of additional features over previous installments or the program's speed. I hope to address what others have said and help you make a decision on whether to buy this program based on its attributes and your needs.

Let me make it clear by saying that Elements is an excellent, if not the best photo editor in its price range. Although the price and features in this program may be more than the average person with a digital camera may need, I feel this program is an excellent choice for all types of users. Be advised, this program has a steeper learning curve than many other photo editors. In addition to that, expect to spend $30-$40 for a book to learn how to use many editing features in Elements if you are not already familiar with it.

Adobe has included it's excellent Photo Organizer in Elements 3 & 4. What's important to realize is that the organizer is a nice way to keep track of and view all your photos, but it's not what you would want to use for quickly viewing an occasional photo here and there. (When I double click an image file I want it open within a second or two.) It takes approximately 10-15 seconds for the elements organizer to load on my laptop if it's not resident in the computers memory. (Longer or shorter based on computer's hardware of course, but probably not too much shorter.) This is why many people complain about the speed of the program and the reason I don't recommend associating elements with many of your image file types. Use a viewer to view and elements to organize and edit! I don't have an issue with loading time because I only use it to organize and edit. When I open elements I am usually in there for awhile.

I have noticed some version 2 reviewers disappointed about versions 3 and 4 taking longer to load. Another major reason of some poor reviews from Elements 2 users, is the facelift given to version 3 to look more like it's big brother Photoshop. Change is usually not welcome when people are already familiar with the program's interface.

As far as whether to UPGRADE from elements 3, I recommend saving your money unless there is a certain feature in version 4 you must have. I really can't believe Adobe added so little over version 3. The magic extractor and selection brush do work very well and are convenient on tougher selections but they are not the universal answer. The additional features in 4 are nice but not worth the $60-$80 price of the program. I own Photoshop Elements 3 and 4. The worst part is, I bought version 3 about two months before version 4 came out. Am I upset about that? Yes. However, I still went ahead and purchased the new Elements/Premier bundle when it released from Amazon since I did not have Premier Elements. I read some reviews stating that version 4 was slower than version 3. I have both installed on this laptop and would say that 4 is a little faster. I can also say I have no problems with the program crashing or conflicting with anything else on my computers.

Some cons of Elements 4 are the removal of the file browser and many 3rd party tools and add-ons that worked in version 3, do not necessarily work in 4.

If you do not own this program and are looking for an excellent organizer/editor and are up to the challenge of learning many of the editing features this program offers then take the plunge. The creativity options are endless. You will be amazed at what this program can do if you know how to use it.

80 of 80 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Still a good, affordable package, but not a worthy upgrade from v3, December 8, 2005

By	Gadgester "No Time, No Money" (Mother Earth) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

First thing first: whether you are considering upgrading from an older version of Adoebe Photoshop Elements (APE), or you've never used APE before but have gotten curious, before you buy, download a 30-day tryout copy from Adobe first. Just go to Adobe's website, roll over Support at the top, select Downloads from the drop-down menu, find Photoshop Elements for Windows, and click the "Photoshop Elements 4.0" link in the Tryouts section.

Yes, the trial version is version 4. And yes, it's full-featuered and even lets you save files, but it will stop working after 30 days and cannot be re-installed.

My own opinion, after playing with APE 4 for half an hour, is it's still what it is: a souped-down version of Adobe Photoshop that's oriented toward consumer photographers, and it's a good value. The photo organizer is reasonably easy to use if a little counter-intuititve and frustrating at times. The photo editor is powerful and comprehensive -- you can even do layers. Of course, if you want something real cheap, consider JASC Paint Shop Pro (...)
For me, though, none of the new featuers of v4 justifies paying for the upgrade from v3. This upgrade is an evolutionary step (and some may argue even half a step backward, but I disagree). There's very little in this version that's compelling for someone like me already using v3. The notorious launch speed has *not* improved from v3, and the interface remains a visual disaster for the most part.

My advice as a veteran APE 3 user? Again, try out APE 4. It's a free download and, as far as I know, spyware-free -- just beware of the file size: 364MB! (Hint: you need broadband to download this.) Play with the program at your leisure and decide if it's for you.

40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More Positives Than Negatives, October 23, 2005

By	David A. Lessnau (Niceville, FL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I'm a very light user of this program. I might take about 20 pictures a year, though my whole collection totals about 2400 pictures. I'm also upgrading to Elements 4 from Elements 2 (and Album 2). So far, this program has a few more positives than negatives for me. As negatives, the only things I've really found are:

1) The slide show producer only allows one photo per page (in Album 2, you could put 1, 2, 3, or a repeating pattern of those numbers of pictures on a page).
2) The program is still bullheaded about where it wants to put files. Even though I upgraded with Elements/Album 2 still in place and it correctly found and converted my Catalog in the directory where I had it, it put the new Catalog in its own default directory. I had to do a Save As to get my Catalog back where I wanted it. It also didn't change it's default file paths for other operations to those that I had specified in the earlier version. I had to go through my Preferences and change them back.
3) When I finally uninstalled Elements/Album 2, Elements 4 reverted back to the original copy of the Catalog under it's default directory. Once I figured that out, I just had to open my real Catalog (and delete the Catalog stuff under the default directory just to be sure).

Just slightly negative or even neutral, I'd have to say speed: In my case, once I'd done a File | Reconnect, an Edit | Update Thumbnail (on all my photos), and a File | Catalog | Recover, my startup speed was about what it was with Album 2 (I always start up in the Organizer) -- 13 seconds for Album 2, 17 seconds for Elements 4. Filtering on a specific tag of mine went from 1 second to 2 seconds. Really not noticable.

For positives:
1) The overriding plus is the ability to do a File | Write Tag Info To Files and copy my tags into the IPTC areas of the photographs themselves. In Album 2, I had been dreading a loss of tag information or what would happen if I changed programs. Now, as a hedge, I've got the tag information Elements uses copied into the files themselves. So, I feel a lot better.
2) Stacks and Versions are great. I don't do much editing of my photographs, but the ability to group them together (automatically) into version sets with only the final version immediately visible is wonderful. I also had several large swaths of photographs which didn't need to all be displayed at once, so grouping them into stacks with a photo of my choice on top of each as the Thumbnail made things a lot neater.
3) Also, though trivial, it's much nicer having to install and maintain the one program (Elements 4) as opposed to doing it for two programs (Elements/Album 2).

Again, I'm only a light user of the program. So, I'm no expert. But, just the ability to copy my tag information into the files is enough for me to recommend the program. Everything else is just gravy. So, overall, I rate this at 4 stars out of 5.