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Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 |  | From: Adobe
Category: Software
List Price: $99.99
Buy New: $67.87
as of 11/22/2009 15:03 CST details
You Save: $32.12 (32%)
New (34) Used (1) from $67.87
Seller: American Media Soft
Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 7
Format: CD-ROM
Platform: Windows
Media: DVD-ROM
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Operating System: Windows
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.5 x 1.5
MPN: 65045174
Model: 65045174
UPC: 883919176604
EAN: 0883919176659
ASIN: B002ID8R3Y
Release Date: October 13, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 combines power and simplicity so you can easily go beyond the basics to tell great stories with your photos | | • | Make your photos look extraordinary with easy-to-use editing options--whiten teeth, recompose photos, remove unwanted elements and more | | • | Share your stories in beautiful, personalized print creations and web experiences, and share on popular devices | | • | Easily manage and protect all your photos and video clips from one convenient place | | • | Enjoy automatic online backup with 2GB of free storage, and access your photos and videos anywhere you are |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The Adobe Photoshop Elements 8.0 Software for Windows s an intuitive, yet powerful, consumer image editing application for Windows. The software is designed in a way that anyone can use it, bringing the legendary power of Photoshop into the hands of even the most casual photographer.The software features tools that let you organize images into albums, retouch photos, create digital photo albums and share your photos with friends and family. A membership to the Photoshop.com is included, giving you 2GB of online storage for pictures and videos. You can share your Online Albums via a personalized URL, allowing you to view your galleries from anywhere with an Internet connection. Pictures automatically sync between your computer and your online account.
Amazon.com Product Description
The newest version of the #1 selling consumer photo-editing software, Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 combines power and simplicity so you can easily tell amazing stories with your photos. Bring all your photos and video clips together in one convenient place where you can easily find, view, and manage them; protect them with automatic online backup and 2GB of free storage; and then dive right into a full range of creative activities. Make your photos look extraordinary with editing options that let you recompose photos to any size while keeping key subjects intact; combine multiple exposures into a single, perfectly lit shot; and quickly preview a range of adjustments before choosing the perfect one. And share your stories in unique photo books, scrapbook pages, slide shows, and interactive online experiences.  A complete solution for photos. | Extraordinary photos. Amazing stories. Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 software offers a complete solution for photos: - Make your photos look extraordinary with easy-to-use editing options.
- Share your stories in beautiful, personalized print creations and web experiences, and share on popular devices.
- Easily manage and protect all your photos and video clips from one convenient place.
- Enjoy automatic online backup with 2GB of free storage, and access your photos and videos anywhere you are.*
| Top reasons to buy Adobe Photoshop Elements 8  The toolbar says it all. |  Quickly recompose your photos to any size. Click to enlarge. |  Clean up and create composites with Photomerge. Click to enlarge. |  People Recognition automatically identifies the people in your photos. |  Showcase your photos in one-of-a-kind Online Albums, photo books, and more. Click to enlarge. | Do it all with one powerful yet easy-to-use product
Use Photoshop Elements 8 for all your photo needs. Manage, edit, and enhance photos; make unique photo creations; share in print, on the web, and on popular devices; protect photos with automatic online backup and 2GB of free storage*--enough for up to 1,500 photos or 24 minutes of DVD-quality video; and view photos anywhere you are.* Experience the ultimate media management hub
Bring all your photos and video clips together in one convenient place, and easily find your best stuff fast. Then dive into a full range of creative activities and start enjoying your memories. Go from flawed to phenomenal in seconds
Get just the photo fixes you're looking for with one-step shortcuts that whiten teeth and make skies a vibrant blue. And now, when you perform one-step photo adjustments--including color, contrast, and lighting--you can quickly choose the best result from a group of adjustment previews. | Go from flawed to phenomenal in seconds. |  Adjust color, contrast, and lighting. |  Whiten teeth. |  Make skies a vibrant blue. | Dramatically transform your photos with easy-to-use options
Convert your color originals to elegant, nuanced black-and-whites, or use color curves adjustments to get the perfect exposure. Count on step-by-step assistance
Want to touch up a scratch? Create a scrapbook page? Add artistic effects that make a photo look like a pencil sketch? Get help with key steps to get the results you want fast. Easily create the perfect photo
Take advantage of amazing Adobe Photomerge technology to easily remove distracting elements from photos in just a few clicks, create perfect group shots and seamless panoramas, and combine elements of different faces for entertaining results. Get creative inspiration
Bring your ideas to life with relevant tutorials that appear just when you need them. New tutorials help you explore creative possibilities. Share experiences in fresh, exciting ways on the web
Showcase your photos in one-of-a-kind Online Albums with your choice of animated templates, including all-new options for sharing photos and videos together. Adobe Flash technology lets viewers interact with your photos for an entertaining experience. And share via public or private galleries--friends and family won't have to register to look.* Show off your creativity with flexible layouts
Make amazing printed photo creations--like scrapbook pages, photo books, and cards--that you can customize to get exactly the look you envision. Get fun, fresh looks with new artwork and templates. Top new benefits of Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 Recompose photos to any size--without distortion
Ever want to change the size or orientation of a photo to fit a certain frame? Now you can quickly resize--even going from landscape to portrait or vice versa--without distorting key subjects like people or buildings. Get the best exposure
Want to capture all the details in a scene that includes light and dark areas? Snap one photo with flash on and one with flash off, and Photomerge Exposure will combine the shots into a single, perfectly lit photo. Quickly find your best photos
No need to click through dozens or hundreds of shots to find the good ones. The Auto-Analyzer automatically tags your media so you can easily find your most interesting, highest quality photos and video footage. Find specific people in a flash
Quickly find photos that feature specific friends or family members thanks to People Recognition, which automatically identifies the people in your photos. Get the big picture
See the full effect of your photos and video clips from within the Organizer with new full-screen previews, which let you make quick edits to photos while viewing them. See the same photos and video clips on every computer
Forget trying to manually maintain your photos and video clips across multiple computers. With automatic syncing, media added or edited on one computer will automatically be synced to another.* Give your creations fresh looks
Experiment with new artwork and templates to give your printed creations fun and stylish new looks. Enjoy support for Windows 7
Take advantage of support for the new Windows 7 platform and the hands-on capabilities of Windows Touch technology. * Available in the United States only. Internet access required. Also available at Photoshop.com; no purchase necessary. 
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 14
 Some new twists on PSE 7.0 make this a worthy upgrade October 14, 2009
Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA)
178 out of 183 found this review helpful
Ok, let's start with the top question: Do you or I really need another upgrade of Photoshop Elements? Is it vastly different than (6.0 or 7.0) and should this be my digital photo editing and organizing software of choice? I will cover the main points of the changes from Version 6.0 and 7.0 in this review. I have also reviewed Photoshop Premiere Elements 8 which is the video editor, and comes as a package option with Photoshop Elements 8.
Photoshop Elements has two components-- an editor, where you do your digital picture manipulation, and a file organizer or album where you store and retrieve your images. The interface for the editor is the same whether or not you use Mac or Windows, so if you are switching from one OS (say, MAC's at school, Windows at home) you will be very comfortable with Photoshop Elements. Where the systems differ, however, is in the file organizer and this is understandable; the Organizer function involves organizing and retrieving files, so this is going to be different depending on your computer operating system.
Since I don't have access to a MAC, and since I don't know much about them, I'm going to be reviewing the Windows version only from here on in this review. For your information, I'm currently using Windows Vista 64 Home Premium Edition.
My computer system used for this test is an HP Pavilion with an AMD Athlon 64X2 2.70 Dual Core CPU 5200+. I have 4 GB of RAM. The Video card is NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE nForce 430 wtih 128 MB of video memory. This is an on-board video card (on the motherboard) and if you are doing heavy image work, and video, you might want a separate, more capable video card.
Minimum PC Requirements:
Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7
1.6GHz or faster processor
1GB RAM (MINIMUM means MINIMUM; you really will need 2GB of ram to be comfy)
2GB available hard disk space
Microsoft DirectX 9
Color monitor with 16-bit color video card
Internet Access for online features and help
One immediate, small but great change from Version 7.0 is that when the software is initially booted up, the Welcome Screen is rearranged; on the left side: simple buttons EDIT or ORGANIZE. On the right, access to tutorials and underneath, info on your Photoshop online account (space available, links to your personal URL and online organizer.) Version 7.0 had tab buttons along the top of the welcome screen and was visually more confusing. THIS IS A GREAT IMPROVEMENT. THANK YOU.
A big change from Version 6.0 is the workspace, which is now dark gray in color (I actually don't like this--the gray is depressing, but I understand visually it is far less distracting and lets you focus on your editing job.) The workspace is now adjustable. However, if you are a change-o-phobic or just habit-bound, you can return the settings to look and feel like previous versions, for example, the fixed-window workspace of Version 6.0 can be retrieved in the Application Frame in the preferences window. There are other big changes, mainly the organizer, the online content, the personal online space and some editing tools; more about these further on in this review.
In addition to the change to the Welcome Screen, there are changes to the interface where you access your tools. The palettes have been renamed as "panels" so I got confused a bit again. I've been using Palettes for years with editing software; palettes of filters, layers, colors. So, now, they are PANELS, and you can do this right in the panel itself at the bottom. This is also a significant change from Version 6.0 (7.0 does have it.) The big change to 7.0 however, is that the layer controls are now their own panel below the Layers panel. The old dialog boxes are being replaced by these drop-down panels.
Getting down to brass tacks; the biggest change from 6.0 to either version 7.0 or now 8.0 by far, is the Organizer. Not only is there an automatic "organize my images for me" feature, but there is an optional online storage feature that has many uses. The main change from 7.0 to 8.0 has to do with an improved ability to add key word tags and to manage your media. If media management is an issue for you, this upgrade will be worth your while.
Another big change in Version 8.0: do you open multiple files at a single session? (I often download a photo session from say, a parade or one event.) Beforehand, you'd have to go to the file list in "Open Files" and pick which ones or all the ones you want, and try to scroll through them at the bottom to find the photo you want. Now you can open multiple files and use tabs to switch between them. This is huge. If you don't like point-and-click, you can employ a keyboard shortcut of Command-~ (tilde) to page through the open files.
The main change to Version 8.0 is the Organizer. When you boot up the software and have those choices, Edit or Organize, initially you are asked to set up an online account at Photoshop.com. You don't HAVE to do this. And you are then asked if you want to organize your photos, and this is the real advantage; the system combs through your hard drive and pulls up your images, and organizes them (like Picasa and other organizing programs) into a set of albums. The last six months are available with a single click, or you can organize by other means.
If you key-word tag your photos when saving them, and use the Smart Tags (everything from photo quality (good, bad, over, underexposed, face, etc) to event tags, you can create albums and quickly export them to DVD,CD, online albums, or hard drive. If you do a lot of image work and don't want your main hard drive cluttered with images, or if you want to back up your images onto an external drive, this is very handy. The organizer is one major reason to move from 6.0 to 8.0. Organizing a large number of photographs is made seamless and easy with the organizer that appeared in Version 7.0. I didnt think Id need it, but I do need it and I use it. In fact, I need to get better at using the tag feature. This is very good for the increasingly difficult task of finding and retrieving older photos.
You get 2GB free storage online at Adobe Photoshop.com's site, so if you sign up (as is suggested in the Welcome Screen), you can have an offsite, online backup. If 2GB is not enough storage for you, you can pay for Plus membership. Plus Membership starts at around twenty bucks (at this time) and you can go from 20GBmb (about 4 hours of video storage) to 40, 100, 250 or 500GB of storage, with prices rising accordingly. There are other perks such as advanced tutorials, and some bonus art and video effects, but the main reason for upgrading from free is to obtain much more online storage. I used some of the themes for the slide show and there are a few included, so the temptation is very strong to spring for the extra twenty bucks, get the ten-fold increase in storage (easy to fill it up) as well as the larger selection of themes. If you use Premiere, the adjunct video editing, you get increased storage for videos, and movie theme materials for "instant movies." I will be reviewing Premiere 8.0 separately, but you can see that if you intend to use the complete image-plus-video package, you probably will want a Plus membership. I was surprised to find out (me, the minimalist) that I did also want the upgrade. Film buffs and Youtube fanatics will want the extra storage; video takes a lot of space, and you are permitted to upload a video of up to 2GB with basic membership.
In version 7.0, Adobe introduced a much-improved Photomerge funtion. I use this function a lot to make composite photos as well as panoramas and other interesting landscape creations and group photos. I was not happy with the previous Photomerge in versions 6.0 and prior, but I used it a lot as a shortcut to cut-and-paste multiple images to make a composite. Version 8.0 improves Photomerge and adds a very interesting and useful feature: you can combine several exposures to create the "perfect" digital exposure. Take one shot with flash and one without. (Yes, the no-flash shot is too dark; the flash shot is sometimes washed-out or the shadows look funny.) Using PhotomMerge Exposure, you can get a new, improved "best-of-both-worlds" photograph. Here's my take: if you have Version 7.0 and you do a lot of photography, this is worth the upgrade alone.
Two new editing tools, Recompose and Smart Brush, tools also are slick ways to merge and fix photos with a lot less fiddling around, or by using some smarts built into the software. For example, you can reformat a wide photograph, remove a lot of blank space and recompose it to have the figures closer together, but not distorted. I used to do this by a very involved cut-and-paste procedure, copying figures I wanted to move and covering over unsightly elements like road signs or utility poles; this is a lot faster though I still need to do some clever editing myself if a pole appears "growing" out of the top of a subject's head (a huge photographic boo-boo) or if there is some goofy kid mooning you or mugging a funny face in the background of the shot (I shouldn't be telling you this, but a fun way to ruin someone's vacation photograph is to sneak into the background as they compose their award-winning photo of the Eifel Tower or Mount Rushmore and cross your eyes and stick out your tongue. Kind of a human version of that intruding squirrel of internet fame.) Using Recompose, you can remove these offensive things more easily.
There are templates to make cards, calendars, frames and other artwork. I am not into that kind of thing, but it's there for those of you who do scrapbooking, especially digital scrapbooking or who make your own birthday cards or Christmas newsletters. I used the slideshow template and I loved it. I wanted more...but the themes as I mentioned previously, are limited in the basic, included online edition. You have to spring for Plus membership to expand those selections of themes.
No major changes to the filters. Pretty much the same as Version 6.0, with the changes to controlling the interface as I mentioned before. The biggest change to filters is in the smart brushes for photographs. I have been using the filters a great deal ever since Elements was introduced, to pre-compose paintings from my digital photos. They seem pretty much the same as in earlier versions though the adjustments are now easier to manipulate in the Filter Gallery.
This question comes up all the time: is 8.0 FASTER??? I didn't notice any difference loading 8.0 and 7.0. Definitely, versions 7.0 and 8.0 are much faster to load than 6.0, at least with my computer.
Re tutorials, manuals and help; as usual, help is online content though a pamphlet on Getting Started comes with the box of software. In addition to the online content for help, there is a "Tips and Tricks" hyperlink in the Welcome Screen (lower right). This takes you online to a web page with tutorials. The tutorials include what's new in Version 8.0, various help for video editing (this will be covered in my review of Premiere Version 8.0.) You can search for other tutorials, and even submit your own. Tutorials have a rating on the right (one to five stars.) When you click on a particular tutorial, you will see the author, a way to favorite it for future reference, and on the right, you can add your own rating of it.
Summary:
Version 8.0 has a few great new improvements over Version 7.0. It is not vastly different than 7.0 but the Recompose, PhotomMerge Exposure and some of the adjustments to the panels are advanced enough to make this a significant improvement if you like to do digital photography. It is quite different from Version 6.0 so if you have not upgraded and these features appeal to you, I think it would be well worth it to get the improved organizer and the improved tools.
Recommendation: If you are on 6.0 or earlier versions and your PC meets the minimum requirements, do upgrade to 8.0. If you are on Version 7.0 and employ the media organization, upgrade to 8.0
Joanna Daneman
A great product and a terrific deal with the rebate offer October 28, 2009
M. Morton (Odessa, MO United States)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is a fantastic photo editor and organization solution. I'm not sure why there are so many bad reviews. I had no problems at all. If there was one thing I would change, it would be to have two different launchers. One for the standard splash screen to select edit or organize and one launcher for the editor only. You can get around this by right-clicking on a photo file and select 'Open with' (Vista) and choosing the Photoshop editor. This will take you directly to the editor with the photo loaded and ready to go. This is the first "Elements" product I have owned, although I have used an older version of the regular Photoshop product. This is every bit as good for photo editing and much better in many ways. Overall I would highly recommend it to my friends.
Love it! November 16, 2009
J. Riggleman
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is my first try at this sort of thing and so far, it's great! Easy to use and understand.
 There's a learning curve, but a solid product November 7, 2009
M. Weekley (Philadelphia, PA)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
Brief history:
We don't own previous versions of this program; so if you are an owner of an older edition you may want to consult some of the other reviews on here who upgraded. We consider ourselves amateur photographers who have a digital SLR camera and have used THE Photoshop in the past. Lastly, this review is to give a quick synopsis of the program. There are many reviews already written on the technical specifications and limitations of the product. We are writing this as a summary for those who want to cut to the chase.
The Rundown:
Adobe Photoshop Elements 8.0 is a solid program for those who want some of the best aspects of the Daddy of Photoshop, but don't need the extensive extras (or want to pay for them). My wife and I started off trying to use Photoshop from one of our friend's computer but were completely overwhelmed. The original Photoshop is an amazing product, but we needed something that reflected our current level of expertise. We have found Photoshop elements to meet and exceed our expectations. There's a lot of powerful tools in this program that will meet the needs even of some demanding editors out there (in our opinion). Over the past couple of weeks, we have been able to do amazing things with our photos. It's a program that has some amazing tools in bringing out the best in your pictures. Overall we're very satisfied.
In terms of 'cons', I think people have to come into this knowing their expertise level. This is a program that has a steep learning curve and requires people to explore through trial and error. Some people want advanced tutorials and there are some that are provided; however this is a program that requires some instruction beyond following a tutorial or 'wizard'. With more power comes more responsibility from the user. If you are a novice, you will be probably overwhelmed at first with all of the options and some of the terminology (we were and still are in many ways). Photoshop elements requires some training (or exploring) in order to utilize it. People who are willing to do some legwork in learning how to use some of the powerful tools will NOT be disappointed and will grow and learn to do more with the program in the process. This may turn some of you away, but if you're a novice or intermediate photo editing user who is not at THE Photoshop level but interested in becoming better at it, this is for you.
For those looking for basic editing of red eye and touch up of photos, there are plenty of cheap (and free) products out there that meet your needs. This is Photoshop Jr. which will push you to go a little deeper to truly get the most out of your digital photography experience. After exploring a lot of what elements has to offer, we feel that this will fill the needs of most photographers. For those of you who may need more power beyond this program...well you have the Daddy of them all (and the price to boot)
Overall Photoshop Elements is great product if you're looking to do more than basic editing at a respectable price. It works fine on our Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit version computer and we've had no issues.
Upgrade if you haven't in awhile October 26, 2009
C. Stanphill
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
I have owned Elements for many years and have found the product to be all I need for my use. I upgrade every two to three years and that seems to be a good interval. It is certainly not worth upgrading every year. If you are running Windows 7 and having trouble with your earlier editions, Elements 8 may help you. Windows 7 64-bit seems to handle Elements 8 very well.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 14
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