Hi John,
I was upgrading from Elements 2, when I purchased the online version of the
upgrade direct from Adobe. By the way, that's a very inexpensive way to
upgrade from an older version of Elements or Photoshop LE. I'm not sure
what features were in version 3, since I skipped that one. However,
compared to version 2, version 4 had the following things that had me hooked:
It comes with the latest version of the Adobe CameraRAW plugin, which
allows you to open and intelligently process Pentax RAW files. This is the
same plugin that also comes with Photoshop CS2. This single plugin is MUCH
better than the software that came from Pentax! It was also the largest
single motivation for me to purchase Elements 4.
Handles Adobe and sRGB profiles and does conversions between them.
Many of the editing operations can be performed on 16-bit images, and you
can convert a 16-bit image to an 8-bit image. (Bits per color channel, I
should have said.)
There is an elaborate, companion file browsing and cataloging program,
called Elements Organizer. This can also display thumbnails of your Pentax
RAW images, as well as most any other image format. One double-click on a
thumbnail will enlarge the image for detailed viewing. Of course, you can
also launch the editor directly from the browser, and the image/s you have
selected are automatically opened. The browser also displays all the EXIF
information embedded into any of the images you have. You can also add
captions, notes, and tags to images. Later, you can search for an image in
your collection, by searching for a caption or searching the embedded notes
you created.
Whenever I put my SD card into my SanDisk card reader, Elements
automatically launches the Adobe Photo Downloader program to retrieve my
latest Pentax images, and asks me if I want to clear the card after the
transfer. After they have been transferred to my hard drive, I am presented
with a thumbnail viewing of all the new files, in Elements Organizer. I can
double-click on any image for a large view, or I can easily launch the
Elements editor to edit any file I wish.
There are lots of new features in Elements 4. I would suggest downloading
the 30-day trial version, as I did. I found that I just couldn't live
without version 4, since I also have the Pentax *istDS. Elements 4 makes it
a breeze to work with my Pentax files, compared to the drudgery of Elements 2.
take care,
Glen
At 03:29 PM 12/1/2005, John Francis wrote:
On Thu, Dec 01, 2005 at 03:16:26PM -0500, Glen wrote:
> At 12:00 AM 12/1/2005, William Robb wrote:
>
>
> >----- Original Message ----- From: "Ann Sanfedele" Subject: srbg to Adobe
> >RGB ?
> >
> >
> >
> >>The stock stuff I submit has to be Adobe RGB - am
> >>I screwed? or is there
> >>a way I can take that tif and translate it into
> >>Adobe RGB. I have a sinking feeling that I cant.
> >
> >Edit/ Convert to Profile.
> >The window that opens allows you to covert the image to the new profile.
> >
> >Hopefully, Elements has that.
> >
> >William Robb
>
> Elements 4 has that. I can convert between Adobe and sRGB without problems.
Aha! That's something that might make me consider an upgrade.
Any other cool new features? The Adobe website isn't that useful.
