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Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 plus Adobe Premiere Elements |
I've worked with a number of graphics packages, ALL have a learning curve to them. None can read your mind. It's the nature of the beast. Graphics editing is complex and resource hungry, though most contemporary PC's can handle it.
One nice utility is the periodic prompt to backup. As a network admin, I can tell you no one seems to backup. I love it, because even though it can take overnight for the 2000+ image backup, it's nice to know they are backed up to one DVD-R. Also available if you have the DVD burner is the ability to go from DV camcorder to editing to DVD movie, without any additonal software beyond this.
You will also have to commit to doing things "their way" to get the best utilization. (esp file management.) Some of this may be contrary to the way you've done it in the past, but it is best to just "let go" and adopt their methods. It will pay off in the long run.
This software is a bargain, even if you add the cost for one of the many books to the equation. (Adobe's website is also very useful.) It gives you decent photo organization and video editing capabilities at a fraction of the cost. Adobe's $600+ Photoshop photo editing software is probably the best out there, and some of that experience has trickled down into this package too. So for price performance, this is it. But if you are not committed to getting past the learning curve for this software, keep your credit card in your purse.
I edited my pictures with Photoshop Elements. It was extremely easy to make simple corrections and to crop the photos I took. I captured the video using Premeire Elements and quickly cut out the boring parts. After that was done, I imported the photos from Photoshop and added them into the video. I could do pans and zooms and integrate them into the video portions very easily.
When I was finished, I added some titles and some quotes from the trip. I put in chapter markers for the DVD and it let me test it out to see if everything worked. After everything looked good, I burned it to DVD and made copies for my family.
This is not a professional level program, but it has the best features of Adobe's professional series. I also think its easier to use and I like the way the two programs complement each other. It seems that whenever you take video, somebody else is taking photos. Now, with this program, you can put them together on a DVD very simply in a professional looking manner.
I gave it 4 stars because if you want more advanced features like music creation or more advanced special effects, you would have to get the professional versions. However, as it is Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements has a lot of features and serves their purpose well and is easy to use.
Although creating my first DVD slide show was like "the cat eating the grindstone", the final results were worth the trouble. I would buy the software again.
Packaged with Photoshop, it's a great deal.
Anyway, I just got back from Best Buy and Elements 3.0 was $99. Sorry, Amazon.
A few comments. First, the backup utility will not burn on my 16X DVD burner at the rated speed. Second, If you are going to buy this program and use it regularly, definitely max out the RAM on your system - 1GB minimum. If you are using anything less than P4 2.8Ghz, get a new machine. Third, take the time to go through the tutorials and learn the interface - it is very little short-term inconvenience in exchange for the results you will get by doing so. Also, try the Kelby books to learn more, they are very straightforward about doing particular tasks. A great way to learn PSE3....
I have a Dell 4600 ( 2 years old ) with a 2.6 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 Processor with Hyperthreading enabled. It was only after I added a GIG of RAM (Now I have 1.5 GB) and added another 120 GB 7200 RPM drive, that Premiere Elements no longer bogs down my machine. The software works well now. The features are really amazing in this package. The photo organizer is superb, and the photo editing tools work great, especially the built-in quick fixes. The video editing software allows for a lot of naunced controls. I recently upgraded to Sonic DVDit to make better DVDs, however, the native video editing capability there is weak. So I added the Adobe Premiere Elements package to get better audio and video editing features back(e.g., add and edit multiple audio tracks) for my movies. Indeed, a Tech Support person at Sonic said Premiere was a good editor to use along with DVDit. At length, there is no avoiding reality: Really fully-featured software takes some learning. No train - no gain, I guess
To use this software productively, again, you really have to read the manual completely. Then go buy available 3rd party training DVDs. It's worth it. I'm having much more fun now.
* The photo organizer makes finding a particular photo easier. (though if you already have a great deal of digital images it takes a long time to get them all sorted)
* A new feature called quick fix is great when it works. It tends to do better on outdoor pictures than indoor pics. If quick fix does not work another feature, auto levels, does a good job.
* The spot-healing tool is great for removing facial blemishes and other small objects that need to be removed. I have actually been really amazed at how well it works. On some photos it even can remove unwanted faces.
* The red eye correction is another easy to use tool that consistently works well. This red eye tool is the best one I have worked with.
* Multiple audio tracks allow for audio from multiple sources
With all these automated tools editing pictures and video has become a whole lot easier.
I was not quite as impressed with Elements as I was with Premiere. It too is a very good program, but I have found that the auto adjustments (for shadow, color, contrast, etc.) don't always leave you with the best picture and I often have to adjust these things manually. But since you can adjust things manually, I always end up with beautiful pictures using this program.
All in all, I would say this combination of programs is absolutely one the best I have ever used.
Since DVD capturing/converting/burning takes time, it's very important to me to have quality reliable software. I have not tried all of the more advanced functions of PRE. PRE even automatically adjusts the video to make it fit on the DVD which is a nice feature that my other 2 DVD products did not have before.
A introductory tutorial DVD demo for PHE and PRE comes with the package as well which is nice.
Photoshop elements 3
this version of elements is great to powerful and has the integrated Photoshop album which you will fall in love with. Once you go through the process of tagging all your photos (big project at first). Photoshop elements contain so much of Photoshop CS, powerful features. You probably won't even notice it's not CS.
Premier elements.
This program is powerful, if you're into video editing. In this program is the one to get, and it will not break the bank. With this program, you can make awesome photomontages. You will be amazed.
My recommendation is by this package and not the individual units. The savings is amazing. One thing also note at this time. You cannot open Premier elements projects in premiere Pro.
Peace out
Without a doubt, buy the Elements bundle which contains both Photoshop Elements 3.0 and Premier Elements 1.0. It lists for $149 (or $99 for each app), but you should be able to get it for even less.
Photoshop Elements 3.0 (PhE3) is superb. While at first glance it did not seem that much of an improvement over 2.0 aside from a better and more functional layout of the UI, it is without a doubt a huge improvement over previous versions and other similar products. Not only can you alter images in just about any way imaginable, it also allows you to track and tag your photos and images no matter where they reside on your system, even on CDs. You can create categories, sub-categories and tags and associate them to images. There's no limit on how many tags you can associate to an image. All you have to do is click on a tag and the view automatically filters on it. Simply keep clicking more tags to further filter the images. You can even place icons on your categories and select an image for a given tag. Lastly, PhE3 doesn't make copies of your images for it's catalogue, it uses the real images themselves, wherever they live. So be sure you want to make a change or want to delete the image before you actually do.
PhE3 is so incredibly useable that you no longer have to shuffle windows around your workspace because you have six or more images open. There's now thumbnails at the bottom of all your open images and makes switching between them a snap. There are also a couple of new tools. The first is a new cropping tool that can crop an image in any imaginable shape you want like a heart or smiley face. I suspect scrap bookers will love this, though it doesn't seem that I will find much use for it, but who knows? The other tool, however, I know I will find great use for...it's the "healing brush." This amazing tool lets you remove anything and I mean anything from an image as if it was never there to begin with. It's astounding.
If you really want to kick things up to high gear, you can even work directly with your camera's RAW file giving you absolute control over all processing aspects. PhE3 also packs all the filters and affects as before and a ton more shapes to use for creating/cropping/masking. It is a rock solid application.
As for Premier Elements 1.0 (PrE1), buy it, use it, love it. It's unbelievably powerful. You can import clips and sounds, use masks, transitions and all kinds of title affects. You can zoom in on the timeline to whatever level you want. If you want to remove various frames from a clip, knock yourself out. If you want to adjust the speed of a clip, it a simple matter of dragging. All changes made to your movie can be seen in real time so you know what it will really look like.
As for sounds, it can handle just about anything. It supports AIFF, AVI, MOV, MP3, WAV, and WMA. It does warn that MP3 and WMA could suffer quality issues once rendered. I suspect this only affects the higher quality files which most likely cannot be adequately compressed. You can even export just the audio from a clip or movie (AIFF, AVI, MOV, WAV).
Concerning the misinformation on the Amazon review about only being able to create movies for the NTSC (4:3) format, you also can create them using widescreen (16:9) and even anamorphic settings. You can save it in PAL as well. As for the size, especially for Internet and mobile device formats, you can render the movie at any resolution, like 120x80 for smart phones to anything...I even tried 3000x2000 just to see if it would work. Here's the format rundown...
Video formats:
Microsoft AVI, DV AVI, QuickTime, Windows Media, Animated GIF, MPEG-1 (for VCD- and SVCD-compatible movies), and MPEG-2 (DVD compatible movies). Note: Although PrE1 supports VCD and SVCD-compatible formats, you must use a different application to burn those formats onto CD.
Audio-only formats:
Windows Audio Waveform, Microsoft AVI, and DV AVI.
Still-image formats:
JPEG, GIF, Targa, TIFF, and Windows Bitmap.
Sequence formats:
JPEG sequence, GIF sequence, Targa sequence, TIFF sequence, and Windows Bitmap sequence.
You also have the ability to not only export an individual frame as a still image, but the ability to export an entire clip or movie as stills! That's what those "still-image formats" are for above.
There's so much to this application like being able to have 99 video tracks and 99 audio tracks, but another very cool thing is that you can modify and create your own templates for use in PrE1 with Photoshop Elements 2.0 or greater.
Lastly, the bundle comes with a DVD that has two 30 minute tutorials on it (one for each application) by Total Training. They are both very good and only scratch the surface of what you can do with these apps.
The Elements bundle is the value of the century in my opinion.
Haven't played around much with Premiere Elements yet, but I expect it will be similar to the standard Premiere, and so I have no doubt it will be great.
Overall, I highly recommend the upgrade to anyone using 2.0 and am familiar enough with competing products to know this is by far the best of the bunch if you are looking to make your first purchase.
Let's start with Adobe Photoshop Elements. The new version now includes all the nifty photo organization and tagging capabilities of Photoshop Album, and I cannot praise them enough. I've tried MANY photo organization tools but most were too much effort for too little benefit. So I stuck with nested folders and waited for programs like Picasa and Brilliant Photo to mature. Both programs are coming along nicely, but Photoshop Album wins hands-down in terms of elegance, power and simplicity. Not only is the interface outstanding, and not only does it pack a LOT of power under the hood, it also makes childs play of doing sophisticated things like hierarchical tagging.
In fact, organizing and tagging photos with Photoshop Album is so easy that that you can literally tag hundreds of photos in a single session. I showed my wife how to do it and her reaction was, "So? Of course I can do that, why do you need to show me how to do it?" And that, folks, is the ultimate compliment. A few hours after unwrapping the software, my 5000+ photo collection was already sufficiently tagged to instantly locate all photos of me, my wife, our parents, several cousins, many friends, and eight different locations. I can specify any combination of tags to locate specific photos, e.g., all photos of my wife AND both of my parents, in San Francisco, anytime in 2003... and hey presto, there they are! WOW! Photoshop elements encourages you to compile photos into "collections" that you can use to create web pages, greeting cards, even hardcover coffee table books (highly recommended). I could go on but I think you get the idea -- every digital shutterbug should organize and tag their photos before their snaps get out of hand and Photoshop Elements is one of the best way to do it.
But Photoshop Elements is more than just photo organization, it is also a full-fledged photo editing and creativity suite. On the editing side, it has a "quick fix" mode just like every other tool on the market. The quick fix works, but results may vary. I personally felt that the quick fix in Brilliant Photo yielded better results more consistently, and also offered easier options to simulate fill-in flashes and so on. Photoshop Elements can do all that, and it can get just as good results, but it just doesn't seem to do that with the default settings. Perhaps I need to play around with the settings a bit more. But it goes without saying that the standard editing tools in Photoshop Elements are MUCH better than anything you can get with Picasa or Brilliant Photo, and frankly, they are even a cut above Microsoft Picture It. Once you learn to use them, you won't be happy with anything less. Me, I'm still learning and enjoying every lesson (there is a fantastic website called elementsuser.com which offers video tutorials).
Adobe Premier Elements is the new kid on the block. You'd think that more established consumer-grade video editing programs from Ulead, Pinnacle, Microsoft, etc. would have the edge over a version 1.0 product but it looks like Adobe is in this to win. Now, I haven't kicked the tires nearly as much as I should before giving a verdict but so far it has done everything it promises, and handled everything I've thrown at it, without ever crashing, hanging, or acting unpredictably. That's already WAY better than my initial experiences with most of the other video editing programs out there.
Premier Elements is not lacking in the features department either. It can capture video, import photos, add soundtracks, insert transitions, apply effects... all the things you'd expect. But it seems to do them all effortlessly, without breaking a sweat, so to speak. It even creates and burns DVD's, which is a feature only recently available in some (not all) competing products. I don't know how else to say this but it is almost as if the heritage of big-brother Adobe Premier makes it more capable and confident in how it handles video.
Net net, the race is really between Microsoft Movie Maker and Adobe Premier Elements: The former is simple, free, and fairly limited whereas the latter is elegant, inexpensive, and reasonably powerful. The others are somewhere in between and not quite as polished. Movie Maker was great for a few months but I outgrew it pretty quickly. Had Premier Elements been around when I began dabbling in ditigal video, my investment in learning the product might have been longer-lasting.
Having said all this, I should caution that I have a pretty high-spec machine (P4 at 2.8GHz with 1Gb RAM). I don't know how well these programs will run on lower-spec machines. Tagging hundreds of photos is a simple matter on my PC, but might be a tedious affair on slower machines. Applying transitions and effects to video clips is fun when it just takes a couple of seconds to preview each change, but might be more frustrating if you have to wait minutes between edits. Even the user interface, so beautiful and elegant on my machine, might be slow and cumbersome on a lesser CPU. In summary: The software is great and the functionality can't be beat, but your PC needs to be up to the task.
First, the Elements feature. If you have tons of digital pictures on your hard drive and spend minutes looking for individual ones to print out, e-mail, etc., then this program will suit you perfectly. All of your digital pictures can be tagged (events, family, etc.), and then be "sub-tagged" for even more personalization. It's quick, easy, and efficient. Also, photos can be e-mailed easily with automatic compression and cool e-mail "themes." In addition, the program lets you simply take a photo and color-correct it with one mouse click, add neat effects, eliminate red-eye (the best on the market), use the "healing brush" (ingenious) to omit perfections, and even splice and create all sorts of interesting photo montages, calendars, slideshows -- you name it. Elements is a digital photo enthusiast's dream. It has never been easier to get your pictures organized, fix them all up, send them to your family, and archive them on a CD/DVD or create an interesting slideshow, complete with music and animated fonts.
This brings us to Premiere, the video portion of the suite. As long as you have a digital video camera with IEEE 1394 connection ("firewire"), it's simple to get going. I transfered about 30 minutes of raw video, added music, did extensive edits and burned a DVD (4 minute video) in about two days, part-time, which came out exactly how I wanted it. Simply plug the camera into your PC, hit a button, and your entire video is put into a timeline view without any hiccups. Then, edit away. Add transitions, still videos, title screens, digital photos, music, slideshows -- the choices are practically endless. Different tracks allow two videos to be shown at once, providing neat picture-in-picture effects, floating text, animations, nifty titles, fades, etc. Integrated DVD burning with the ability to create your own professionally-designed DVD menu screen is also a major plus. Archive and store all of your videos and images in one place, whether they're from your vacation, the kids' activities -- whatever! Premiere makes it simple, and to date, I have not had one crash, hiccup, lost frame, or rendering problem. I have a dedicated hard drive (60 GB) for all of my video/audio work, and I recommend anybody interested in doing these types of processor-intensive tasks do the same. Premiere/Elements is installed right on this drive, so I have plenty of room/memory to keep the thing perfectly oiled and moving.
Adobe makes great products, and the Photoshop Elements/Premiere suite is no exception. Highly recommended.
First, Photoshop Elements is terribly SLOW, SLOW, SLOW (much worse than the regular Photoshop CS or the previous version of Elements). Using the UI and zooming in and out of pictures is a chore. It feels very bloated.
Second, Adobe Premiere, while ok for basic DV editing, doesn't do the other things it advertises. I tried to import a MPEG2 clip, edit it and then save as Windows Media, but it didn't work (video looked terrible and the sound was missing). It turns out it ONLY works for DV editing - they disabled the ability to edit videos of different sizes, etc.
Also, I wish Premiere supported the new USB 2.0 video transfer capability (called USB Video Class) being implemented by manufacturers so you don't need to buy a separate FireWire card. I'm thinking of getting a JVC GRDZ7U camcorder which has that feature and would love to bring the video directly into Premiere via a high-speed USB 2.0 connection.
I applaud Adobe for bringing out this package for the general consumer - it's long overdue. However, they need to optimize Elements and not cripple Premiere so that it only works on DV.
Frankly, I wish I would have gotten Pinnacle Studio Plus for the video editor and just stuck with Photoshop CS for photo editing.
Previously I had bought and used two similar "high end" products and was not very happy with them as a new user and new to digital movie making.
I've found PE for my use to be much easier to use and more suitable than the other companies' products. It never once crashed or locked up my system (WIN XP) as did one of the competitor's products multiple times until I stripped every single program out of my computer, loaded every single update and finally got disgusted.
With Premiere Elements I even used other programs during the process of preparing the movie to be burned and then during actual burning and ended up with an hour of very nice looking video that plays great on both the computer and the DVD player.
I found as I got used to using it that I could produce a usable movie with little effort and as I became more familiar and "explored" other features and option I got to really like the flexibility of processing the sound to remove the noise from my low end Mini DV Camcorder and started to tweak the video in each scene where the shooting conditions weren't optimum.
My personal opinion is that you can't go wrong with PREMIERE ELEMENTS and the package is a great bargain.
I've been a casual user of Photoshop Elements 1.0 then 2.0 and 3.0 with the combined Album is likewise a wonderful program with some nice new features to make it even easier to use for the beginner while providing some more powerful new features.
***I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS PACKAGE !***