Adobe - Photoshop Elements 2022 - Windows [Digital]

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The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). Select reviewers may receive discounted products, promotional considerations or entries into drawings for honest, helpful reviews.

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Love this product

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  • Owned for 3 weeks

  Love this product. Running for elected office the videos show me how to make professional sings and posters to get the message out to voters. Well worth the money.

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  Posted 3 years ago by Mike4Indiana2nd

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  Much the same as older versions, a bit easier.

  • Tech Insider Network Member

  Basic headline: Solid program, as usual. Until getting this update, I had not used P. E. for eight to ten years. That said, I find that the program is in many ways much the same as it has always been, but with some improvements to make it more user friendly. That said, the program definitely still has a bit of a learning curving. The trade-off is that learning how to use it and manipulate the options available gives users a high level of control over their images, and there is a lot you can do with this program. When you first open it, it also gives you lots of things to try and will launch the appropriate workspace for you. Of course, some of those things to try are only available if you add on to the program, or some will open a web page that explains how to do the task outlined, but not a guided tour as in other parts of the program. Over all, there is a lot of value in Elements. There may be too many choices. I’ll break this down in a bit more detail below. But, the bottom line is: if you’ve used elements before, you’ll know how to use this program. If you’ve never used elements, there are some good ways that it introduces you and guides you through features. However, the program is still complex enough that it takes a bit of effort to learn what features to engage for a given task if you’re trying to edit in a custom format. As well, it seems to me that the interface—which hasn’t really changed over the years—is starting to feel a little clunky. Some of the drawing and painting apps that I use are more intuitive and less frustrating, even though they are free or relatively inexpensive. That said, they cannot do what P.E. can do in terms of enhancing photos, adding elements, merging images, and layering complexity. The basics: --Three modes of engagement allow the user to decide how much control/how much help they will get when using the program. In “Quick” mode, the very basic editing tools are enabled, but many things are not. You cannot add layers in this mode, for example. This mode allows cropping, selection, basic edits and enhancements (color, contrast, etc.) and adjustments (lighting, contrast). There are auto adjustment options, or sliders to do your own custom adjustments for given categories. This works if to just fix the contrast or color in a photo, for example, or maybe select a piece of a photo to copy, fix red-eye, etc. --In “Guided” mode, P.E. gives the user choices of what kinds of edits to make, and then takes the user through the steps to do these targeted tasks. This includes things like photo merges, color adjustments, vignettes makings, object removal, replacing background, removing objects, etc. These generally work pretty well and can provide desired effects. There’s even a meme maker (though it’s a little limited) and a lot of these effects seem geared toward creating social media images. There are also some cool effects here (like creating multi-color collages, background blurs, tilt-shift effects, landscape clean-ups, texts and border options, extending photo elements beyond borders, etc) that are easy to do and fairly successful when following the directions. Some of these effects seem a little cheesy—but many of them could be quite helpful for producing print-worthy photos and online content. Unfortunately, the built-in "share" function in this program only links to flickr and twitter. I'm a little surprised by this, but I don't especially care. Others might find this annoying. --In “Expert” mode, P.E. turns the reigns over to the user and unlocks all the features of the program compared to the quick mode. One needs to engage “Expert” to manipulate multiple layers, for example, and get the full suite of editing and drawing tools. This is where the user has the most control over the work, but also where the controls are the most fussy. If one has a clear set of editing goals, it makes sense to engage the “Expert” mode. If the goal is more exploratory, in the “This is a neat photo. What can I do with it?” then the guided mode might be the better place to start. Does this program work? Yes. Does it work as it should? Yes, for the most part. It’s still really a bit touchy in the “Expert” mode, but the “Quick” mode doesn’t feel like it can always get the job done. It’s good that there are these different modes, too, because using the “Guided” features can also help one learn or re-learn the fancier features, as long as the user pays attention. It’s nice to have more control over editing photos, whether in a very cursory way or in a more exacting way, before—say—loading them into a program to print them or put them on a coffee mug. The interfaces for photo makers usually allow some editing capacity, but they are truly limited. This really lets the maker see the qualities of the photos and work on them. Using Elements can definitely help enhance and maximize your photos’ artistic qualities. It can produce some fun and interesting new artistic creations, and it can just be fun to mess around. It’s also a bit alarming that photo editing can be pretty easy; this is how a lot of stuff gets faked. While it’s often pretty obvious, I was also impressed that even pretty quickly, some inventions (say, inserting a person into a group they were not in) could be accomplished fairly believably. This is both impressive and a little disturbing. I will admit while using some of the creative parts of the program to also wondering if I should be able to easily swap out the background of one photo and seamlessly replace it with a background provided to me from a photo program. Yet, the basic intention is still there: this program can help enhance a photo that has some less than ideal lighting or contrast, etc. Starting with good basic material, though, is still going to make for the best results. Elements still feels a little user-unfriendly, and the interface just seems…still kind of ten (or more?) years ago. People who have been using this program for years, I think, will not be surprised by what they see for the most part. New users have to learn the language of Photoshop a bit, but I think this program makes that easier than it has been at points in the past. Full disclosure: I don’t know when they added the different levels to the program. I don’t recall being able to use these features in the past, but as I noted above, it’s been a long time since I used the real, branded Photoshop Elements. That said, some of the “create” options available still feel pretty basic. While I can create a calendar in photoshop…the templates available really do not seem “new,” or especially inspiring. With some ingenuity, I’m sure this could be accomplished. But printing it would be so expensive that it hardly seems like a useful application of time. This is the sort of thing that I’d think would be more efficiently and professionally accomplished through an internet printing service. I'll say as well: I find it extremely difficult to use this program on a laptop with a touchpad. While I’m sure any graphic artist would find such a comment obvious, the average user might not think about the fact that this program is easier to use when you have a larger monitor and a mouse. I found that I liked best working through a tablet and electronic pen, which I could use to interface with my computer. Using the pen made it easier to select areas of the photo and use drawing tools. I’m not sure if using this program with a tablet-enabled laptop would work easily or not. I think it probably would be far more preferable than the touchpad. I should also note, I was primarily working on photos taken with a digital camera, not with a phone. This is not to say that phone pictures are low-quality, just that I was working with images saved on my computer. I dislike using the cloud, and I don’t have a good sense of how easy it is to interface Elements with cloud storage, for example. I also dislike how Adobe has shifted so much operation to the cloud. While I think everything stays on home base--unless you say otherwise--with Elements, the program wants you to have an Adobe account in the very least.

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  Posted 4 years ago by CrazyDogPeople

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  My first ALL IN ONE

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  • Owned for 1 week

  Looks as good as it performs! Touch screen is Amazing..(doesn’t quite move as well as mouse… my fingers can get to the perfect spot), but the ALL IN ONE cpu is worth every penny.

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  Posted 3 years ago by MrBeats