
Customers appreciate Photoshop Elements 2021's ease of use and its wide array of features for photo editing, including options like sky replacement and face tilt. Many find the software to be a good value for the price. However, some users have experienced compatibility issues. The program's performance is generally considered excellent.
I’ve been using Lightroom for years, but really dislike Adobe’s forced subscription model, which is why I took a look at Elements. Elements has just about everything most users would ever need. It has an Organizer module, which lets you organize photos by folders, create photo albums, and add keyword tags. Although, with Adobe’s facial recognition and Sensei (an AI search capability), manually adding keywords could be a thing of the past. Elements does a pretty good job of recognizing the people in your photos. And with Sensei, you can search your photos for just about anything you could think of. You can search for things like lakes, mountains, cars, smiles, holidays, guns, and even rodents if that’s what you need to find. Not sure why you’d need to search for rodents, but you can. The Editor module has plenty of guided edits that walk you through correcting lighting, straightening out a picture, removing objects, creating a panorama, and lots of other things. You can even completely change out the sky if you want. I only spent a couple of minutes, just for kicks, on the attached photos. My only real complaint is that it requires you to have, and log into, an Adobe account. One of the reasons I looked into Elements to begin with was that there’s no subscription required. If there’s no subscription, then why do I need to log in to an account? Makes me wonder how long before Adobe says ‘you’ve been using one version of software for too long, so we’re going to lock you out ‘cuz we want some more $$’. Not a huge deal, but irritating enough to cost a star nonetheless. Bottom line, if you’re looking for a good way to edit and organize all the photos you take, you owe it to yourself to take a look at Elements. And, in my opinion, one of the best things is that if you’re happy with the features Elements 2021 provides, you only have to pull your wallet out once, and you can (theoretically) use the software for years.
Posted by cw77
I love Photoshop Elements 2021. I use it all the time. I get such cute pitures. I can't see how anyone would't like it.
Posted by Retta
Photoshop (the full version) from Adobe has been around literally for decades, and is used by creative types of many sorts and experience levels. For many years though, it was a VERY expensive program to purchase, and eventually, a few years ago, became a subscription program. Not everyone needs the bells and whistles of the full version though, or wants to subscribe, so a while back, Adobe created Photoshop ELEMENTS, which originally was a stripped-down lite version of Photoshop. It has evolved, slowly, into a program that offers much more than earlier versions (which were a bit sparse on features), but doesn’t overwhelm a user with a pro-only type interface. When you first open the program, you are greeted with an updated welcome screen that will flash a few tips in one panel, and offer a scrollable area of projects you can choose from. It loads a little quicker than previous versions. You can also see the last few files you had open and were using, and from here can open the file organizer to see many files on one page, open the photo editing program, or if you have purchased the video editor as well, can open that from here, too. A search area lets you search for things before opening if you like. Elements 2021 now offers many tools that semi-pros and even professionals will use, but also has easy to understand “quick” and “guided” areas where you can make quick adjustments to images, or do more extensive adjustments like remove objects, make part of an image into a drawing, create memes or even animate photos into a 3D(ish) GIF. Someone closed their eyes? You can paste open eyes into the image! Create larger panorama photos stitched together from several you take of the same scene, share your creations using social media, and a TON more – far too much to list here; the guided area has six categories of projects and I count literally just under 60 different things it will guide you through to do to your pics. The interface for the hand-held areas is much easier to use than older versions of Elements too, and there is the “expert” mode for those who know what they’re doing and want full control over their images or other project types as well. As someone who has put my toe in stock photography, I’ve found that the expert mode has all I’ve needed for my images from the basic adjustments like cropping and lighting adjustments, cloning tools, and text work, to more elaborate lens distortion correction tools, being able to work with “RAW” images, layers, and much more. Taking photos with a phone or camera and using them as-is has become a norm for many people, but I would encourage you if your budget allows, to try Elements. Start off with basic photo adjustments to brightness/contrast and color adjustments and work your way up to the guided projects. You will be amazed at how just a few quick, simple, adjustments will improve good images into great ones, and having a program like this to help you along the way makes it a less tedious learning process. Before you know it, you’ll be delving into the expert area and doing more than you thought possible. Recommended.
Posted by AtlantaGreg
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