There’s a reason Adobe Photoshop Elements is a household name in photo editing; we’ve always praised its rich set of editing tools. But when it comes to sharing photos with friends and family, it always fell short of Web-based competitors like Picnik. But Adobe is catching up in that department; while the latest version continues to serve up new editing and organizational tricks, it also allows users to upload albums directly to the Web, thanks to its integration with the newly rebranded Photoshop.com.
Hardware Requirements
When you buy or download software it’s easy to breeze over the system requirements, apart from making sure it’s compatible with your operating system. But this version of Elements has fairly steep requirements: it only works with Windows (for Mac users, the most recent version is Photoshop Elements 6). It also requires a 2.0-GHz processor, as well as a full gigabyte of RAM and a hefty 1.5GB of disk space. People with older, creakier systems might want to opt for Google Picasa, a lighter, if less robust editor.
User Interface
When you first open Photoshop Elements 7 you’ll see a task-oriented screen with options for organizing, editing, creating, and sharing. Once you enter, Elements has the same look and feel as other Adobe products, including Photoshop.com: a dark gray background with lots of small, colorful icons.
Once you enter any of these areas, you’ll see a static pane on the right side of the screen, which has tabs for Organize, Fix, Create, and Share, so that you can move between these tasks with ease. Otherwise, the rest of the interface—the hierarchical tabs, the icons lining the left side of the screen—change depending on what you’re doing.
We like that despite how many features the program boasts, there’s still plenty of space for editing and viewing photos. But as with other Adobe products, the small icons’ purposes aren’t always obvious until you roll over them with your cursor.
