Photoshop Elements vs. Photodeluxe

I have been using Adobe PhotoDeluxe 4 at home for photo manipulation. Mainly I use it for photo re-touching and adding special effects. I am, however, always on the lookout for new features.

I see that Adobe has discontinued PhotoDeluxe and will be concentrating on Photoshop Elements as the home-use product for photo manipulation. I was thinking about picking up the current version of Photoshop Elements. I was wondering if anyone here has any experience with both packages and can tell me what the main differences between the two packages are.

Zev Steinhardt

I transitioned from Deluxe 2 to Photoshop Elements (V. 1 and now 2) last year. I do the same kind of projects as you and really enjoy using Elements. Elements is much closer to providing the same functionality as the pricier Photoshop. The interface has less obnoxious “guide me” kinds of presentations that mar Deluxe and allows you to control the amount of application-provided help to a greater degree than with Deluxe. The only thing Elements lacks that Photoshop offers are color management and separation functions for commercial printing.

Elements also has some tricks that Photoshop doesn’t, especially the Photomerge feature. This lets you stitch (or rather blend) two or more images into one. I use it a lot in scanning items that are larger than my scanner window. Also great for panoramic shots and artsy collages.

Opinion: Elements is far superior to Deluxe. The clone tool alone is worth the new software. Keep your eyes open for upgrade deals. I upgraded from Deluxe via Amazon for a net cost of $10 for version 1 and another whole $5 for version 2.

Another must have is Mikkel Aaland’s Photoshop Elements Solutions book. I just saw it at Costco for a huge discount.

Zev, you might give Paintshop Pro a try. It hasn’t got the ultra friendly interface of some of the other programs but has virtually all the functionality of Photoshop for a fraction of the price and will take photoshop plugins. You can download an eval version that will work for 60 days which should be enough time to learn it. You can buy it directly for $100 but I’ve seen the retail box for $70-80 and seen some competetive upgrades.

Provided you’re on a Windows platform…