Right now all I have is Photoshop Elements 2.0... so far it has been ok for what I want. No-way will I buy the full deal... I'm a cheapskate. But I have been seeing some good deals on Photoshop Elements 4.0. Does anyone know the differences & if they are significant etc?

Decia

Elements is roughly the equivalent of Photoshop 7.5 but with some elements of version CS (8) added for good measure all wrapped up in user friendly interface that tends to hide many things but also has many features available in the full Photoshop completely disabled - mainly in the masking and layer functionality. So in answer to your question, a reasonably significant change over version 2, yes.

Thanks that helps... I felt completely in the dark.

Decia - Nothing wrong with being cheap, if you are satisfied with your current level of creativity. You can get an older full version of Photoshop on ebay

Jerry .. if that's a crack site .. we don't allow such promotion on caedes

Keith - I dont think its a crack site, it just sells older versions of software cheap. Hmm. . .Ill have to explore this more myself. Thanks Keith. Decia ignore my remarks please untill I find out what this really is.

To all - I had to delete part of what I thought was helpfull advice.I didnt know that wayrz is commercial software that has been pirated and made available to the public via internet. The use and distribution of WARZ is illegal. Freeware & Shareware are legal and may be freely copied. I thought it was all the same. Thanks Keith for alerting me to this. (I am now humbly studying a techno dictionary)

I couldn't get the page to load .. so I had to ask .. sorry if it is legit

Keith - it sure looked legit. But I never really explored it much, except to compare prices. They freely admit, they sell older full version programs with serial numbers.WOW what a good deal I thought. Finally in the FAQ's they admit they are a WARES Shop. I wasnt sure what Warez really was. so I looked it up. I am not a criminal, whos gona feed my dog if I go to jail. Thanks I learned something here.

No harm done .. and thank you

now .. back to our regularly scheduled show

Some friendly techno babble advice. If the versions of software they were selling were old versions of software that were no longer being sold by the parent company, they would be considered abandonware. If a software is abandonware, it is legally allowed to be sold without the consent of the parent company. This is the reason why eBay is allowed to continue to exist. However, if the serials that they were selling were not legit, it would not be illegal, but it would however cheat you out of your money.

WAREZ sites are notoriously bad with this and are frequently riddled with viruses and trojans. I definitely go with eBay or Amazon if you want to make sure you are getting legit serial numbers.

I myself would say there is a significant change between 2 and 4. There seems to be a multitude of stability issues that have been addressed, along with quite a few new added features. In my opinion Elements is just a defunct version of CS1 now. If it were me I would just save up for Photoshop CS, but that may not be a viable alternative for you.

any software that is upgraded to a newer version does NOT mean the previous version is cast to the wolves

it stands to reason the company would not be selling the previous version .. and your logic is fundamentally FLAWED

My next question is.... is it possible to have 2 different versions of PS elements on my computer at the same time & have them both function?( not at the same time of course) 2 & 4 for example?

Decia

yes it is - but from many personal experiences - it's not a particularly good idea as Adobe products have a nasty habit of corrupting preferences between different versions of the same package. Some people keep multiple versions of PS active to work around Legacy problems in a production environment which begs the question why you would need two versions of Elements running.

The reason I thought of maybe keeping 2 versions of PS Elements operable on my computer was because of a comment you made in your previous message; namely
"also has many features available in the full Photoshop completely disabled - mainly in the masking and layer functionality." There is some masking function in PS Elements 2 but it seems like you are saying masking is not part of PSE 4. Maybe I am reading too much into your commment?

Decia

yeah i Just meant that the elements masking capabilities are no where near as extensive as the full blown photoshop :-)

Ok-- got it. Thanks.