Great product. I bought photoshop to go along with painterX as an investment for my sons future as an artist, so far it has been a valuable tool. Thank you

This is a great program that I've been using since it first came out. I usually skip a Rev or two when upgrading though and then wait till it goes on sale. I really only use the basic features for my needs the majority of the time, but there's lot's here for the pro with MANY plug-ins available from others. Has great output on my Epson and HP printers.

For the longest time, I had thought that Photoshop Elements was a much watered down version of its bigger sibling; that it was no more than a 'kiddie' software package. But oh, was I wrong. Very recently I was leaning towards purchasing CS4, but had been hearing quite a bit about Elements 7. So I downloaded the trial version - as well as the same for CS4 - and began to kick the tires of both. Now, it should be noted that I am far from being a serious 'Photoshop' user - even though I have had Photoshop 7 for a number of years. In all honesty, I hadn't even begun to really mess with that program until last year, when I seriously got into digital photography (I was given a copy of that program, by a good friend who, apparently, thought it too much to learn). When I finally decided to delve into it, I, too, found it quite challenging - but knew that I wanted to learn it. Now that I am into photography - and am starting to make some money from my efforts - I wanted to become a legitimate user of Photoshop. CS4 moved itself out of my line of interest due to its hardware component requirements. I wanted to stay with the Photoshop family, but would I really need to dive into CS4 for what I wanted to do? Well...that is the reason that I shifted my focus to Elements 7. And I am SO glad that I did.

Elements 7 is, truly, a very well-heeled program that will suffice me just fine, and there is much more under the hood than one might think. Kiddie program? Perish THAT thought. Of course there is the 'Guided' area of editing, where one could receive directions for what they might wish to do - which is to say that younger editors (or older ones, of meek nature) could take advantage of a degree of involvement with it. But make no mistake about it: this program has guts, indeed.

I won't go into the finer points of this great program, because so many others here have already brought those out. It also isn't the program for everyone, because of the level of commitment that must be given to it - in order to get the best out of it. There are some other good editors on the market, and I have two of them here (PaintShop Pro 9, and PhotoImpact Pro 13), but Elements 7 is my 'go-to' program now. I am still sitting with the trial version, as I await the arrival of my purchased package.

Blessings.

I asked for Elements 7 for Christmas, and have been very disappointed. If you plan to spend hours on a single photo, perhaps it is helpful. I am trying to use it to import and organize my family photo album, and it is extremely slow. I have a quad core processor with 4gb of memeory, and still I spend more time watching a progress bar than using the software. So far, I regret this purchase decision.

I was forced to buy this so called upgrade because Adobe refuses to issue a RAW fix for the Canon G10 for my Photoshop Elements 5.0. They have issued a RAW conversion file but only for versions 6.0 and 7.0. So they are adopting the Microsoft approach. My next computer will be an Apple and it will be goodbye and good riddance to Microsoft and Adobe.