Hot Products > Software > Graphics & Photo

Adobe Lightroom 2.0, Upgrade Version (PC/Mac)

An significant upgrade to a great application, 2008-10-26
Ideal for anyone with an expensive camera, image management software Photoshop darkroom 1.0 was a great image editing and processing application. Now Lightroom 2.0 has arrived. Lightroom is kind of a batch processing application where it uploads photos from your camera card, tags and sorts them, and then allows image editing [cropping, enhancement, optimisation] before exporting them to disk, printer or web/email. It has a powerful set of editing tools built in and almost removes the need for a separate image editor like Photoshop CS4. You can download a 30 day trial from Adobe to see if it meets your requirements or whether budget consumer Adobe Photoshop Elements 7.0 or the fantastically expensive Adobe PhotoShop CS4 is more suitable for your needs. Lightroom 2.0 even integrate into PhotoShop CS4 if you are lucky enough to own it, and passsing images to it no longer requires export as TIFF or PSD files. Lightroom 2.0 is an ideal application if you have to shoot loads of photos one minute and pass them on to visitors the next, or you simply want to minimise image editing time on the PC and get out there again with your camera.

The only downside is that the full version price of Lightroom 2.0 has jumped up to £230, although that makes this far cheaper upgrade price seem better value if you already own Lightroom 1.0, particularly as this is a worthwhile upgrade. The most obvious change in Lightroom 2.0 are dual monitor support, more options for localized image processing/editing, an ability to take 3rd-party plug-ins, better 'removable drive' handling and the 'smart collections' image database tool. There's now an Adjustment Brush and a Graduated Filter that can apply affects within the image rather than just globally as before, e.g. for doing things like softening skin on faces and darkening & colouring skies respectively. There's a new [search] Filter Bar and the Library Module has been redesigned and offers more image information [for image selection]. There's a new picture package layout engine for printing multiple copies of photos, offering 16-bit printing and adaptive output sharpening can be applied to the print output based on image resolution. In addition Lightroom 2.0 now has 64-bit Vista and Mac OS 10.5 support.

Be warned though the application layout has changed and you need Adobe's latest update patches and a modern fast multi-core Intel graphics workstation PC to get Darkroom running smoothly [which I have]. Plus I don't care for the trendy charcoal gray interface, text has been black on white since the written word was invented millennia ago for a good reason, and classic XP/Vista window colour schemes and layout are simply more practical during use. It does help you concentrate on the image though I suppose, and it recreates that vintage darkroom feel [where you can't see squat else]. Still that's a minor quibble given the merits of the application. School kids, college students and departments will qualify for significant educational discounts on all Adobe's software, so check these out if that includes you. Visit Adobe for further details of the software & educational discounts.

PC system requirements are an Intel Pentium 4, XP or Vista Premium, 1Gb system RAM, 1GB hard-disk space and a 1,024x768 display. The fact that AMD processors aren't mentioned might be significant. Adobe installers often reject any PC that falls below the minimum spec, plus 4Gb system memory, a ~3GHz multi-core CPU and a fast graphics card will certainly speed things up. To quote Adobe: "The new Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 is the serious photographer's essential toolbox, providing one easy application for managing, adjusting, and presenting large volumes of digital photographs so you can spend less time in front of the computer and more time behind the lens."

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 and Premiere Elements 7 Bundle (PC)

• Produkt Version: 7.0
• Sprache: E

Adobe Photoshop Elements 5 (PC)

Gob smacked - pure innovation, 2007-11-06
I was able to manipulate my photography to such an extent that my mind was irreparably bent....I have nothing but admiration for the program but also harbour contempt due to the catastrophic mind bend.

Adobe Lightroom 2.0, Full Version (PC/Mac)

I think Lightroom 2 is wonderful, 2008-09-15
I'm sure I agree with some of the comments already posted on this product, such as relocation of some of the tools (which is annoying for the first 30 mins unti you get used to it), but the improvements are well worth the upgrade. I didn't notice some of the missing features of earlier versions so I'm not sure I'd used them that much - you may or may not yourself.

It can be a little clunky if your PC spec is a tad on the low side, and getting used to the new features such as graduated filter can take just a little getting used to.

After v2 I'm not going back to v1.x, its great :)

Create your own Greeting Cards: Second Edition (PC DVD)

Easy to use , 2008-04-10
Tock some time to install but is very easy to use. After 20 minutes have made my own card with my own picture.

Photoshop Elements 6 (PC)

Adobe's best value application, 2008-11-22
With most of the applications produced by Adobe requiring a small mortgage to purchase, it makes a change to see a program that represents good value for money. For less cost than many stand alone raw file converters you have a program that can import raw files using the same plugin that is produced for their full Photoshop application. On top of that you are able to do some surprisingly complicated image manipulation, including full lens distortion correction and white balance control. For the more graphic inspired amongst us it carries a wide range of adobe effects and brushes. For the less technically minded you can switch to quick or guided mode. The layout is good, and keeping the effect palettes on the far right of the interface works well on the newer wide screen monitors. It some ways the feature set may seem a strange mixture, but you have to remember that this is not a program built from the ground up, it is really a version of Photoshop with selected features removed. A bit like a budget Ferrari with cheaper seats, fittings, and fewer gears. Some fairly high end features are included whilst other, more basic features, have been stripped out. For instance, there is no basic colour balance control, (only a variations control) yet channel levels and hue and saturation controls are the same as found in the full Photoshop. On the up side, the basic engine is retained, it still has lots of power, and a quick search of the web will reveal plenty of people writing freeware plugins to fill the gaps.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 (PC)

A great photo editing package for home users, 2008-09-06
Presently on PcPro's `A-List', Adobe Elements is a cut down version of Adobe's £500+ Photoshop/Photoshop Extended CS4, and costs considerably less while still having a lot of useful photo editing capabilities. Photoshop CS4 has a steep learning curve, but Photoshop elements is far more home-user friendly. A lot of the program is geared towards image storage and management of the photos on your hard drive, helping with emailing, web output and scrapbooks of your images. The program can auto-downloads your images from the camera to folders, set up using the date, and can even process the images, say automatically removing red-eye, while it does it. Using stacks you can set up image databases [smart albums] using keywords like names, places, events, etc.., and you can even search using visual tags within the image. That said, I shun the image database options offered by Photoshop Elements and Extended, preferring the simplicity of logical folder names instead. Also, like PhotoShop, the image database side isn't seamlessly integrated into the image editing side [to the point where it's actually annoying]. The trendy charcoal 'white text on grey' interface is also style over function, you find it harder to read than black text on white, and more importantly to tell which photo window is active - professional PhotoShop CS3 users are far better served with standard Windows colours.

New to Elements 7 is a new Quick Fix tool to soften surfaces while keeping the edge and detail sharp - i.e. a blur tool, which can help to remove unwanted image noise. Plus there's a new Scene Cleaner tool that can brush away undesirable objects from a photo [so you can ditch that car or tourists from the view] and there's now a Smart Brush which lets you instantly apply effects to a selected area of the image. Plus Element's 7 sports a new single step `whiten teeth', 'make grass greener' and `make the sky blue' tool - but this is little more than streamlining tools within Quick Select and Adjustment Layer Presets that were available on Elements 6. Besides Adobe's suggestion of using the tool to whiten teeth and add a suntan to say Aunt Doris's face may make her look a little ridiculous. Also new in Element's 7 will be a free subscription to Photoshop.com, a special service Adobe has devised to bring friends together by providing quick access to on-line backup, storage, and sharing capabilities. You get 2GB of on-line storage, `enough for up to 1,500 photos', so you can view your photos from virtually anywhere. Thus Photoshop Elements goes `Facebook', allowing you to share your photos `in fun, interactive ways via invitation-only'. For these `Online Albums' you will get new [quite fun] animated templates delivered to Elements on a regular basis. There will also be a Photoshop.com ` Plus' membership offering 20 Gb [15,000 photos] of on-line photo storage, but that will require you paying an annual fee. The first year's 20 Gb subscription is included in Adobe's `Elements 7 Plus' [but not this standard version].

And all the old Element 6's tools are there as well. For editing you have a set of 'quickfix' options or you can load the full image editor for greater manual control: such as adjust sharpness, correct camera distortion, levels, hue and skin colour. Naturally you have standard tools like crop and adjust image size (pixels) as well. Plus there are step-through guides [guided edit] to help you get there. The software will also integrate with scanners twain interfaces if you are into scanning film, and the Fill Light [shadow/highlight] tool is pretty essential for bringing out detail in shadows from any slide/negative scan. Plus Elements can handle RAW camera images, although I use TIFF/jpg (Elements can save in any common image format).

System requirements are quite high: CD drive, 1Gb system RAM, XP or Vista, 2GHz processor, and a Direct-X 9 graphics card [and Adobe installers can reject systems that don't meet the minimum spec]. Elements 7 perhaps isn't a crucial upgrade from Elements 6 or even 5, but for new home users, or those with older versions, it's very powerful photo editing and image database software from the market leaders. The new 'Scene Cleaner' tool should have been the 'killer app' for those considering upgrading, but it is little more than Elements 6's old PhotoMerge Group application and it requires a series of photos where one has the background free to copy across [and it sometimes gets the exposure wrong making the added bit look rather obvious].

Adobe Elements 7 has only two real competitors at the price: Paint Shop Pro X2 and Serif PhotoPlus X2. Both these programs are also excellent and worthy of consideration, with PhotoPlus's strength being it's about as powerful but rather cheaper to buy and upgrade. Likewise Corel Paint Shop pro X2 occasionally offers a bit more than Elements [layer masks, and curves], is also cheaper and a tad easier to use, although it can be buggy [not Adobe's strong point on first version release either - so install those patches]. Professional users and some SLR enthusiasts will still head towards Adobe's semi-automated PhotoShop Darkroom 2.0 and the fantastically expensive Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended, although even at work we have Adobe Elements on a few imaging workstations for casual users, where the high cost of PhotoShop CS4 Extended simply isn't justified. That said experienced Photoshop CS4 users will rapidly find Elements 7 lacking in a few key features they are used to.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 is also available to buy as a cheaper double pack with the new Adobe Premiere Elements 7 video editing software, which should be even better value than this upgrade. Plus this double pack qualifies for a large educational discount for non-commercial use if you, or a child in the house, are in full time education [from primary school to college]. Similar large educational discounts apply to much of Adobes software. Those buying for College/School department use will save even more.

Photoshop Elements 6 (MAC)

A Photographer's Dream!, 2008-08-04
This is by far the best purchase I've made this year. Apart from the lengthy but not too complicated installation, this is a perfect piece of photo editing software for Digital Photographers and people of a creative nature. I use this program on my Macbook with not to much difficulty at all. It did use a lot of the resources on my laptop when I had a 1G memory but after I upgraded my memory (which was in my plans anyway) to 2G it worked even better. It does say in the box that for optimum use, it needs 1G of memory so don't try running anything else at the same time. I've used CS3 and there are probably 90% of the features on this program. Unless you are a serious professional (e.g. High end sports or nature photographer) then I really would advise you save your money and get this. I'm a semi pro photographer who has sold a quite a few pics and this works perfect! One other slight downside is Adobe's lack of putting a manual in the box. I have bought this manual Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac: The Missing Manual and it is the best manual on the market at a great price! Easy to use, in depth explanations. So if you buy this program then I seriously advise this book too!

Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 Ultimate

MY OPINION, 2008-12-01
i think this product is great yes it is slower loading in at the start but this is because it is a bigger program and to be exspected to sum it up i love it full marks

CorelDraw X3 Graphics Suite (PC)

Does everything a graphics package should, 2006-11-03
I am a University student studying multimedia and website development,and so am being prompted to concentrate on illustrator, photoshop and flash,but I keep reverting to producing my graphics on my old favourite- Coreldraw,and I keep on scoring higher than the rest of them.That`s because I began with Coreldraw8 years ago and have continued to upgrade as time went on.This latest release Coreldraw X3 just gives the designer every imaginable tool to work with.The new powerTRACE in particular really allows so much flexibility in taking a client`s existing,inevitably bitmapped imagery,and presenting it back to them in ways that they never imagined previously.The text capabilities are as versatile as you can imagine,and page layout is easy and yet professional.The increased compatability means that you can export and import work between such a diverse range of products that there are no bounds in terms of print or web,photo or animation that you can`t cross.
This is an easily mastered package that nonetheless produces powerful and versatile results no matter what the area of interest in graphic/photograhic or animation production.
I use a number of packages at the moment but this is and will always be my favourite and preferred package.