Customer Ratings & Reviews

Photoshop Elements 2018 is Adobe's latest, consumer-level version of it's flagship photo editing program, Photoshop. Elements brings sophisticated editing abilities within reach of the novice and casual-user. The guides, tutorials and clearly defined levels of editing make it fairly simple to do cool things. I was able to accomplish a wide variety of effects without too much confusion and was pleased with the results. As a Mac user, I continually find the Adobe user interface a puzzle. It is not as intuitive as I'm used to and, compared with most Mac programs, requires extra steps for many functions that aren't usually needed. It also does not integrate with the Apple Photos app - a big inconvenience. But, by now, I'm used to this Adobe quirk - though still mystified as to why it persists. However, Adobe Photoshop Elements is still one of the best programs available for bringing a wide variety of solid photo-editing features within reach of average consumers. Although there are some new competitors in the Mac world, there's not really anything else that directly compares. A solid choice.

I am disappointed with how difficult this program is. I am not computer illiterate but feel like it because I am not successful with it even using their poor tutorials.

Once again Adobe has provided a great product for the non-professional photographer at a great price. This edition continues to build on previous editions to allow in depth editing and tweaking of photos. Having used this product for the past few years, I can definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a quality photo editing product without having to pay the large up front or monthly price for the full package.

At first glance I wasn’t too impressed with the program but the more I began to use it , the more I found how intuitive the program is. First tool I enjoyed was content aware feature which allow you to remove objects and fills the space background surrounding. I’ve use Photoshop in the past and even though this doesn’t have all the bells and whistles this program makes it easy for amateurs and professionals alike to quickly edit photos on the fly. I enjoy the open eye and smile feature which allows you to fix faces for that perfect shot. As far adding photo effects this is where it think it shines and the ease of use to make unique photo effects. You don’t have to be a pro to make amazing special effects. Overall this program will do most things Photoshop CC does. The price of Elements is very comparable to the Photoshop subscription. I would rather pay a one-time fee than a monthly subscription. If your not a professionally photographer this is your best bet for a none subscription photo editing software.

I was looking for a program that would give me good editing ability as well as slideshow creation. This program does the former well and definitely a step-up from free or basic editing applications. I am not impressed the the slideshow features on this program and would say they are more basic. If you want both or heavy feature-rich slideshow capabilities, you should look elsewhere. Learning to use all the features as a beginner (or new to Adobe) may have a learning curve, but you should pick up on in quickly. This program is good for beginners and even more advanced users, but definitely not for professional use. Price-point is also very good for an Adobe Photoshop program. The organization system is thorough and offers many options to categorize by place, people, date, and you can even assign ratings. It has features like Auto-Curate to find what it considers your best pics, this worked pretty well for the most part if you want to put together a quick album. There is also a good amount of knowledge-base available to help you learn what you may not yet know how to do. In terms of editing, I was happy to see accessing basic and advanced features were streamlined and easy to adjust. Basic adjustments like Hue, Brightness, Contrast worked just as expected. It took me a little effort to get right, but the open-eyes editing feature was fun to play with and surprisingly effective. This is perfect for those moments where you only have one or two pictures that were almost perfect. Slight learning curve to perfect, but solid feature. Adjustment of facial features was weird, yet impressive. It gives you the ability to "turn a frown upside-down." You can adjust the eyes, nose, etc. It really gives you multiple fine controls of each feature that you would not be able to do without a special program and does it very well. I was very happy to use features like auto-select and brush to which are akin to tools in professional Photoshop. These also have the added benefit of "Guided Edits" which help you master or learn new techniques. Adobe really thought through each level of this program with the idea of multiple levels of users. Filters can be added then further edited to really unique images such as the well-known water brush look. The "painterly" option makes for great printing onto canvas. You can easily share with friends and family through the integrated share feature in the program. The slide-show option will create nice, basic slide show. It will display all your hard work in to a nice presentation, but the features are very limited. This is what bumped this down to 4-stars versus 5-stars. I'd actually give this 4.5 stars. For a really impressive slideshow, you'll have to use another program. Overall, highly recommended. Great price point, tons of features, and perfect for almost every non-professional user.

My interest is PSE at this time was just to try out organization capabilities of the software. Probably, as most other people/families, we are taking multiple pictures every month with multiple phones, DSLR, regular P&S cameras, etc. Organizing them and finding good pictures for printing/sharing is a big pain. PSE lets you organize photos based on dates (obviously), people (using facial recognition). The one features which interested me was organizing based on events. You can define custom events based on date ranges. Unfortunately, I didn't find a good way to automatically classify photos based on defined events. I had to choose photos explicitly as well. One thing which I am not quite sure is if PSE would let me organize the collection physically on disk as well. I would rather prefer to keep my photo collection future proof and would like to browse it manually if there's a need for it. Installation wise, it was a 2.4GB download. You do get discs for Windows and Mac along with your purchase but I preferred to download it just to get the latest and greatest version. I am not sure if there's any difference though. You may install it 2 different computers at a time with a single key. As per my research, switching your license to another computer is pretty straightforward as well. Overall, organization capabilities of PSE seems promising to me and should hopefully serve me well.

For work, I was provided the full suite of Adobe Web and Design... an excellent, but expensive product. I wanted to be able to have more photo editing and processing power on my Mac at home, without pay an arm and a leg. Photoshop Elements fits that need. It obviously does not have all the features that Photoshop has, but it has everything needed to help make your pictures even more perfect. It's perfect for people who are just starting out with editing photos, as well as appealing to those who are a bit more advanced. This is my first time using Elements, so I cannot really comment on whether they've improved it or not from the previous version. I can say, though, I do recommend this product for all basic to intermediate level photo editing.

Spent 16 hours with adobe support to get it working. Lost 9000 photo in process..

I could not figure out how to use this. The program kept shutting off.

I am a Creative Suite user from way back, and I know my way around PS. i no longer needed the entire Suite of programs, so I tried out the individual product this time, since it is the one I use most often for home and work. This edition is very geared to social media and organization, as well as easy edits for less technical users. You can still get to all the layers and curves and raw images, but you'll also be able to move quickly through just making your family a little prettier for the Christmas cards. The guided edits are really nice in this version. It's amazing how much is built-in now as far as filters and even facial feature shaping (a little creepy, actually...).

I found the software very difficult to upload onto my desktop.

I've used Photoshop elements and another photo processing package for years. Some times one outshine the other on the different versions of windows. Well, I find that, the current release of Photoshop has some issues with Windows 10, with and without a touch screen. I've had several images files (jpeg) which just won't load, but windows displays then and my other package is fine with them. But my biggest complaint about the current package is that as I move sliders to make changes to the image, I don't see changes until I release the slider (with mouse and touchscreen), this is most annoying. I looked back at an older verion of PSE I had on a Win 7 machine and it did not work this way. I keep hoping that the "next" update (and I've seen several) will fix this but no luck. Now some of thre new features are very interesting, editing of raw images is now supported, and has been improved with several updates. The open a closed eye works pretty well (if the eye is small enought; don't bother trying with a portrait, you'll clearly see the stiching). The facial recognition feaure takes forever to run, The ever growing list of photo fix options work very well, I'm especially happy with scratch removal on scanned images. I had thousands of scanned images and this single feature was most improved and welcome (compared to previous versions). The current release of Photoshop Elements, works, but not quite as desired (expected). With 10,000+ of images, I'd hoped to use facial recognition to organize what I had, but it's way too slow (on fast i7, Nvidia, 16GB memory, SSD disks). I will say they have improved the programs load time significantly.

I've used a plethora of photo editing programs through the years and Photoshop Elements has always been one of my favorites. It's always been, for the money, one of the best options out there and this release is no different. To be totally honest with you, I haven't used Elements in a few years as I've been hooked on a freeware software. This one caught my eye so I thought I'd give it a go. It is much simpler to use than previous versions and has some pretty cool new features like the "open closed eyes" and the changes within the Organizer. I've never really like these type tools in the past but this one is actually very cool. For the money, this is an easy recommendation. It is powerful and affordable. But, honestly, if you don't spend a lot of time working with this type of software and need something for occasional use...it might be worthwhile to check out the free alternatives. Good luck!

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2018 is my first foray into using Adobe software. I have a prosumer DSLR and I don't usually like to edit my library of 17000+ pictures. What caught my eye is the organizing aspect of this software. It has allowed me a generous degree of flexibility in organizing my photos with such features as facial grouping, geotagging and it making a pretty good guess that a batch of pictures were shot in the same place by the proximity of the timestamps. The interface is informative and relatively easy to use. I have mainly used the organization portion of the software, but found the editing tools to be fairly straightforward and not complicated to try out different adjustments to your images. I will say that using the "auto edit" tool didn't produce a noticeable difference to me. Most of my photography is outdoor/nature type shots. I would highly recommend this program to anyone that likes to tinker with their images, organize large libraries of photos and those whom like to create collages of their images.

The quick edits make this an easy tool to use when going through a lot of photos. The photo management system is also very useful when looking for multiple photos of the same person. I love the facial recognition and how easy it is to assign names to faces. This is an awesome product, although I can't tell much difference from the last version.

Elements is a great solution for those non-experts who are looking to make expert level edits to their photos. It offers some really advanced options in an easy to use format. For those that find themselves overwhelmed by the user interface and options in Photoshop, consider looking at Elements.

Easy to use photo editing software for all of my photos of my kids and family. Makes good photos look great and organization is smart as well. Would definitely recommend this to anyone

The tools I at first thought were gimmicky are actually very slick and powerful, especially the eye open tool if your working with children. The selection tool has been refined and works much better than previous iterations. Overall I like the program and love the fact that it still exists without a monthly subscription ( I left Photoshop when Aobe did that). The only specific gripe I have is the ugly UI. To me it mimics an early version of Paint. The standard tool layout is meh and the standard gray background to me is very off-putting. To me it seems Adobe tried to make it look retro and failed. That being said it still gets the job done. Elements 18 is straight forward and easy to use as always. It is a one time purchase without the need for ongoing monthly fees which is always fantastic.

I used Elements to get a grasp on my unruly Collection of photos and it really helped!! I'm not sure I'd actually *pay* for this capability though. If you have a big enough collection is probably worth the time savings...

I have used the professional version of photoshop but a bit paired down. For a beginner or for hobbiest this will do the job. Honestly it feels exactly the same as older ones for me but I dont use it fully I guess