Questions About Photoshop

samiamew · Post by **samiamew** » Thu Sep 21, 2006 1:17 pm

I've been thinking about getting Photoshop -- presenting my cels at their best in my gallery

-- but I've been holding off.

Now I have a need to get software for work -- I need to be able to clean-up images, create charts and graphs -- and combine the images/graphs with text (marketing ideas and such) -- and create a nice clean, crisp work product that will display well via Email or a printed copy.

Will Photoshop Elements 4.0 do that for me??

I'm hoping someone here has sufficient knowledge and 'hands-on' use of Photoshop to help me make this decision

............I
hate when they leave this stuff up to me and I have no idea???..................

.

aernath · Post by **aernath** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 9:28 am

Photoshop Elements 3.0 was able to do that for me.

I just got 4.0, so I'm not as familiar with it, but I'm sure they wouldn't take away features for an upgraded version? <.<

Sparta101 knows Photoshop!

**** edit
Well, it did cleaning up of photographs/scans and added text overlays at any rate.
I never did graphs and charts with text, so don't know about that bit.

Sorry.

bulma_gt · Post by **bulma_gt** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 9:39 am

I think Photoshop Elements is not the best choice for what you want to do. I have that one in my pc and it's mostly a program to work with pictures and images in general. I have other Photoshop at home (can't remember the version sorry) which has a lot more options and tools to work with.

Lynxa · Post by **Lynxa** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 10:03 am

Photoshop elements came with my tablet, but I find myself using Paintshop Pro for most of my needs. Of course I haven't had too much time to fiddle with stuff

I CAN tell you that Elements is a scaled-down version of ordinary photoshop and it's missing a few things that the full version has

Snakeskii · Post by **Snakeskii** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 1:57 pm

To be very honest, it sounds like you might be best off using Microsoft word or PowerPoint to do what you want. You can edit the images in the program you have, and then switch them to word or PowerPoint to combine the text and graphics.

You might be able to do what you want if you had the full version of adobe Photoshop--I doubt it's possible with elements in the way that would be worth your time, although I haven't used elements at all. I've done quite a bit of design work, and I use Photoshop for photos and graphics, Adobe Illustrator for graphs and graphics, and Adobe Indesign for layouts and text (quark would work too). The downside is these are very expensive programs that probably wouldn't be worth buying for a single project--plus they can be difficult to learn.

This is just my two cents...best of luck and I hope you find something that works for you!

Baakay · Post by **Baakay** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 2:20 pm

Snakeskii wrote:To be very honest, it sounds like you might be best off using Microsoft word or PowerPoint to do what you want. You can edit the images in the program you have, and then switch them to word or PowerPoint to combine the text and graphics.

I'd agree. Powerpoint does a great job with most graphics, and word is pretty good at most things as well. Depending on your operating system, Microsoft has a nifty photo editor that gets bundled in to many machines. I was frustrated at work because I'm so used to Photoshop (I have the full Version 7.0 at home) but I don't have it here. Then I started playing around one day and discovered that even though it looks clunky, the Windows Picture Editor will do almost anything I wanted to do with Photoshop.

And it came with the machine and didn't cost six or seven hundred bucks all by itself

Charts and graphs will be MUCH better if you do them in Excel or Access and import them into whatever kind of document you want. Cel scans you can make look quite good without using that much of your disposable income

samiamew · Post by **samiamew** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 6:15 pm

Thank you so much for everybody's help

The biggest problem I'm finding is getting a clear, crisp print out of something I've put together -- there aren't too many programs on my pc at work -- I do have Excel and Word -- but I've been using Paint to overlay text onto the image -- unfortunately, it leaves a 'shadow' behind the text in the saved document -- which causes everything to look blurry when printed on paper (that and the colors don't stay 'true').

I'll have to look Monday to see if I have the Windows Picture Editor.....and I'll play some more with Word and Excel.

Thanks again!!