Elements, CS5, or Lightroom?

[WhoDo]

How would I go about buying a hard copy and proving it if it's ok?
I've only ever had Elements (quite a few years ago, version 5 I think?) and hadn't heard much of LR.

For photography work, it is likely that the latest Elements will be more than enough for what you need. If you want to get into graphic art, then the full version is the way to go. You should have Lightroom either way, as it is just so easy to process lots of images. Both PSE and LR are a fraction of the cost of the full CS6.

You can download trial versions of all 3 from the Adobe website. If you decide to download CS6 be aware that it is several Gb in size and could take forever depending upon your connection. Otherwise check out the Adobe website for a retailer near you. Hope that helps.

[billyalphabet]

If I may toss in a curve ball, considder the Gimp. It is free and quite powerful. It does have a learning curve though.

[Ezookiel]

Kids in school counts, well it did for my kids in high school. I bought the student edition at Officeworks for $189, and it installs itself as a free 30 day trial, you then email Adobe a scan of a student ID, or several other types of proof of "student" status, and they send you a registration code that turns it to the full student edition. It's very easy. They're quite good to deal with, and the flexibility of the student system is remarkable - I bought it in my name, with my daughter's student ID, and my wife's credit card, and that caused no problems to them at all.
I do love CS5.5, so 6 would have to be excellent. It has been a heck of a learning curve though, but my theory was that I was going to have a learning curve whatever program I chose, as I've had very limited experience with photo software, so if there was going to be a curve whatever I did, then it may as well be a curve with what is traditionally seen as one of the best bits of software out there.

[genuinesqueak]

Thanks everyone for your replies.
I got the trial CS6 and four days later my computer has what seems like a virus so now I'm a little too scared to download any more trials in case it was something from the Adobe website. What I did get to use in CS6 was amazing and so simple. Has anyone else experienced virus's or strange computer behaviour after downloading anything from the adobe website? A friend told me she had a virus after downloading something from there only a week before I did, but it's Adobe, surely it'd be safe??
Ezookiel do you know if there is an age limit for the student. I'm worried I'd buy it then be rejected (my son is 7, haha) and then I'd have an expensive 30 day trial.

[Ezookiel]

Not that I am aware of, but they would need something to show they're a student, and 7yo might not have ID cards yet, but there were other methods and means (school bills, reports etc from memory, you'd have to check their website). It also applies if you know anyone who teaches or works at a school too from memory. I'll see if I can find the splurb on their page that says what proof is required. I remember that part wasn't a simple search last time.
BTW, never had a virus from them, but my daughter got one from the ABC website the other night, and I got the same one several months back from some other innocent site, we both got one that pretends to be an anti-virus program that is popping up fake virus warnings and wants you to make a payment to the company before this software will remove the virus's it's supposedly found. I know it was a pain to get rid of, because it disables cntrl-alt-delete, and website searches, so had to use the still clean desktop computer to find the info on how to get it off the laptop. It was a little tedious to remove, and neither myself nor my daughter had clicked ok on anything dodgy, opened any odd sites or pages, clicked on any advertisements, just midstream while browsing the page, up it came, straight through our genuine anti-virus at the time too, which didn't impress me.
Lucky I generally know what I'm doing with computers, I suspect there would be people who would just pay the fee.

[genuinesqueak]

Oh no! I'm thinking it was one of those random type things. Thankfully my trusty four year old laptop is still working haha. I only had the computer for two weeks! We've had no pop ups or anything strange like that but kept getting the blue screen of death and a black screen saying something about "no bootable device - insert boot disk and retry"... It'll start up ok in the morning then freeze about 15 minutes in and then it's touch and go whether I can get it started or not for the rest of the day. Have uninstalled everything I downloaded from adobe (three days worth of CS6 downloading and installing because I have a slow connection haha) and still nothing.
Stupid computers!

[ROA44]

Just wondering if anyone uses Corel Paintshop, a guy @ work uses Corel Photopaint and says it can do almost all that photoshop does& 2 $70's for paintshop 5 that's not bad just not sure if photopaint & paintshop are the same still trying to check on that point.

[peterb666]

Just wondering if anyone uses Corel Paintshop, a guy @ work uses Corel Photopaint and says it can do almost all that photoshop does& 2 $70's for paintshop 5 that's not bad just not sure if photopaint & paintshop are the same still trying to check on that point.

I use Paintshop Pro and have been using various versions since Windows 3 days. I use it at work for graphics capture and editing of graphics. It works well and unlike most graphics software the capture process is integrated into the software - not a separate program.

I have a copy on my PC - it is about 2 versions old now and I sometimes use it but it is not my first choice in software. It is very different to use compared to CS5 and some things work very well indeed. It is cheaper than Photoshop Elements as well which is probably its real competitor.

[ROA44]

thank you Peter looks like photopaint is the professional version & about $450's still better than photoshop so may look at L/R

[peterb666]

I have never used Photopaint. Paintshop Pro was made by a company that Corel bought out and they have maintianed the product and continue to update it.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

[Mark L]

...
I got the trial CS6 and four days later my computer has what seems like a virus so now I'm a little too scared to download any more trials in case it was something from the Adobe website......

Download the free edition of this ...... http://www.superantispyware.com/download.html
Then run a full scan, which while take some time. Then download the CS6 trial again, and run a quick scan.

[conscuba]

thanks Ezookiel,been holding off buying lr and ps ,but with 4 kids in school, will now go shopping