Elements or iphoto

Shostakovich

Shostakovich

Shostakovich

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I own a Mac and an thinking of buying elements...

Should I, or should I stick to iphoto?

I've haven't actually "used" either yet, as I have only just got my digital camera...

Cheers
 
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If you want reasonably good control of your photos, then iPhoto won't be enough. It's a good display package for slide shows and things like that, as well as a bit of saturation, contrast and levels work, but if you want better control or to do any manipulation, you'll need something better. Have a go with iPhoto and see if you feel like it's lacking, as there's no point wasting money unnecessarily.

As above, Lightroom will give better overall control of your photos, but is still lacking on the manipulation front - for cloning etc. If you're after doing this sort of thing, then get elements or photoshop.
 
iPhoto and Lightroom are workflow programs, allowing you to apply changes, such as contrast, brightness, saturation alterations, to lots of images at a time. This can obviously also be done to individual images too. These are extremely useful apps and very powerful.

Elements is a cut down version of photoshop, of which CS3 is obviously now the newest version. Normally, you would work in a workflow app first and then do any serious editing - cloning, air brushing etc - in photoshop. These apps will also obviously allow you to do all of the editing you can do in the workflow apps (and much more - hence the price), it's just simpler the other way.

If you go on the adobe site and to the 'photoshop family' page, under products or whatever it is, there are video guides and pages to show you what they all do.
 
A.N.Other said:
iPhoto and Lightroom are workflow programs, allowing you to apply changes, such as contrast, brightness, saturation alterations, to lots of images at a time. This can obviously also be done to individual images too. These are extremely useful apps and very powerful.

Elements is a cut down version of photoshop, of which CS3 is obviously now the newest version. Normally, you would work in a workflow app first and then do any serious editing - cloning, air brushing etc - in photoshop. These apps will also obviously allow you to do all of the editing you can do in the workflow apps (and much more - hence the price), it's just simpler the other way.

If you go on the adobe site and to the 'photoshop family' page, under products or whatever it is, there are video guides and pages to show you what they all do.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the good descriptions. I read also the difference in speed between CS2 and CS3 is massive between the old processors and the new Intel ones (the way they were designed). I saw a little test on the net where CS2 took 48 seconds to load up, whereas CS3 took 16 seconds!

http://lars-christian.com/blog/apple/photoshop-cs2-vs-cs3-macbook-speed-test

This makes me think it might be easiest to use CS3, if Elements isn't massively fast either (as we only have 4.0)...and it would be nice to learn how to use such a good program..

But then, might lightroom be all I need...
 
Shostakovich said:
But then, might lightroom be all I need...
Click to expand...
Lightroom is a very good app and you don't want to be getting CS3 if you don't need to. The question is do you see youreslf using the features of CS3 above what you could do in lightroom anyway? I would suggest that you download the trial of lightroom (here) and see how you get on with it before you buy anything. You can also get a trial of CS3 there, as well as elements, if you want a go with them too.
 
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