Photoshop vs Elements |
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Compare Photoshop with Photoshop Elements... |
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The Best Answer The single best way to compare Adobe Photoshop products is to try them out! You can download both Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop Elements 8 right now. You see, I can talk about the kinds of things that each product does, what differences there are, particular kinds of activity that each program supports ... that’s the long answer! But you’re not interested in whether it suits the ‘average’ person, you’re interested in whether or not it suits you! So download a fully featured free trial, and try out the things that you want to do. Try Photoshop first, and if you fall in love, great! But why not try Photoshop Elements afterwards too, and see if you miss anything when you change to using Elements. If you don’t miss anything, and you find it easy to use, why not save the cash and get Elements? If you find you’re longing for the extra features of Photoshop, or you find the Elements interface limiting or annoying, you’re probably better suited to Photoshop. Give it a go. Try Creative Suite 4 Free Try Photoshop Elements 8 Free |
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The Long Answer First point of the Long Answer: You should definitely listen to the Best Answer. If you haven’t downloaded a free trial, you’re missing your most vital experience. But if you have tried out the software, and you want more details on the specific differences, then here’s the long answer: The Versions It should be said, that there are actually more than just the two versions available. There’s Photoshop Elements on the one hand certainly, and then Photoshop on the other – but actually Photoshop has a second variation. Photoshop is officially called Photoshop CS4, part of the Adobe Creative Suite 4 software bundle. There are several different versions of Creative Suite that include different bundles of software (geared towards design work, web tasks, the production industry, or all three). There is actually an even more advanced version of Photoshop called Photoshop CS4 Extended, included in some of the Creative Suite bundles, available for those who need even more power. In short: |
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Photoshop Elements  Photoshop CS4 Photoshop CS4 ExtendedSimpler Functionality Complex FunctionalityGeared Towards Home Users Geared Towards Professional UsersLess Expensive More Expensive |
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That’s a simplification, in that Photoshop Elements isn’t just a cut down Photoshop, it
really is a different program. That will hopefully become clear below. The differences
between Photoshop CS4 and CS4 Extended are much smaller relatively speaking. If you decide
to get all or part of a Creative Suite bundle, you should consider which one would suit
you better. I like Adobe’s take on it: "If you work in film, video, multimedia, 3D, manufacturing, architecture, engineering, medicine, or science, Photoshop Extended is for you." A short and sweet summary. But before you can look at that choice, you’ll need to compare Photoshop with Photoshop Elements, and that’s what we’re about to do. I’ll try and be concise with each point here too. The easiest way to start to look at the differences is to look at the things that Photoshop has but Elements doesn’t. Here are some of the top things a Photoshop user would miss if they used Photoshop Elements: CMYK and LAB Color Modes One of the reasons Photoshop Elements isn’t an option for professional graphical development is that it doesn’t support the image color modes that are used for professional print work. Images can be represented by RGB (red, green and blue) values, CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) values, and a host of other options. Photoshop Elements only really supports RGB. Almost all professional print-work (for example, magazines) require CMYK images. So the average Photoshop user would miss CMYK.  Channels and the Channels Palette Similarly, the channels palette allows you to see, and control separately, the individual color components of an image. For example, if you're working with an RGB image, the channels palette will allow you to work with just the red component of the image. The same is true for CMYK and LAB. This can be very useful for advanced image editing.  Smart Objects Smart objects are objects that retain all their original information when you apply transformations to them. For example, if you take part of an image in Photoshop Elements and shrink it down very small, once you confirm that change a lot of image data is lost. If you try and make that object large again, it will appear very blurry and pixelated. A smart object would retain the original image data so that the image would be undamaged and of high quality after many transformations. There are other ‘smart’ features like smart guides, which allow lightning quick alignment of objects on the canvas. These are the kind of features which you might not even notice once you’re used to them, but you’ll really miss them when they’re gone!  Layer Masks and Quick Mask Mode Masks are really useful. Probably more than you think they are. Even if you already thought that they were important, more than that. A mask is essentially a grayscale image that is applied to another image. The completely black parts of the mask will cause the corresponding parts of the other image to be completely transparent. The completely white parts of the mask will make the image fully visible. And you can use any level of transparency in between with the various shades of grey. Once you’re accustomed to using masks, you’ll probably never want to go without them. Normally when you compare Photoshop Elements to Photoshop you should imagine the things you’ll want to do with the program, but in the case of masks, even if you can’t envisage how you’d use them at this stage, take my word for it – they’re useful. ;)  Advanced Layer Style Options and Some Adjustment Layers They’re not for every project, but for a lot of jobs, layer styles are really helpful, and can create great effects with almost zero work. Something similar could be said for adjustment layers. Photoshop Elements does have layer styles, but the options available are very limited compared to Photoshop CS4, and I’ve found myself often frustrated when trying to achieve the same thing in Elements as in Photoshop. Some of the more advanced adjustment layers are missing in Elements too, including the curves layer, color balance layer, selective color layer, and channel mixer layer.  Pen Tool and the Paths Palette Both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements have various abilities to handle vector image data – that is, data based on coordinates, angles and numbers, rather than pixels. Photoshop has far greater flexibility when working with paths, the most general type of vector component. It also provides you with the pen tool, an easy way to create paths, which is probably the thing most sorely lacking in Photoshop Elements. Editing History Log When it comes to remembering how you did it, Photoshop beats Photoshop Elements hands down. How many times have you thought, ‘how on earth did I get it to look like that?’ It can be very frustrating. Photoshop gives you the ability to save a log file which contains all the history of the editing steps that you made, so you can retrace your steps when you need to. Essential if you’re involved in any kind of training or tutorial making where you explain what you did to others. Custom Actions and Batch Processing Tools If you find yourself needing to do the same thing over and over again to large sets of images, the batch processing power that Photoshop affords is likely to save you hours of time compared to the rather limited options that Photoshop Elements offers. Photoshop also allows you to record custom actions, which are something akin to ‘macros’, and allow you to repeat a complicated action sequence that you record at the click of a button or the press of a key. Customizable Keyboard Shortcuts, Tool Presets, and Interface Setup Talking of which, Photoshop provides a truly admirable amount of customization when it comes to which keyboard shortcuts you want to use, how you want your interface set up, and how you like your tools to work. Photoshop Elements tends to provide a simpler interface designed to help you with specific tasks, but less generically flexible. Combine Multiple Exposures to Create High Dynamic Range (HDR) Images If you’re not familiar with HDR you might think, "Sounds kinda boring, probably isn’t that important." Skip the article text by all means, but take 30 seconds to compare the images you can produce with and without HDR. If you want to produce *stunning* photography, Photoshop’s provisions for HDR might prove very valuable to you. Lens Blur Filter Talking of image effects, there’s another image processing technique exclusive to Photoshop which is pretty legendry. The ‘Lens Blur’ is a special kind of blurring filter which is very fundamentally different to other blur techniques (specifically, it can’t be imitated using Gaussian Blur), and can be used to create realistic photographic effects such as depth of field in your images. It was widely regarded as a long-awaited and important addition when Adobe added it in the first version of Creative Suite. Advanced Type Formatting and Text Following Paths If your work goes beyond just photographs to flyers, larger publications, or web based work, you almost certainly use text quite a lot. Photoshop Elements provides a good level of text editing for most projects, but Photoshop extends that with professional typesetting abilities that allow you to achieve just about anything you could possibly want to with text. An example would be text that follows arbitrary paths. Advanced Web Features and Animation Talking of web based work, Photoshop Elements just doesn’t compare to Photoshop CS4 when it comes to the advanced features that allow you to produce great, professional websites. Rollovers, slicing and animation are a few examples of things that require much more effort in Elements, but are catered for in Photoshop. And if you buy Creative Suite, then you’ll have access to other great programs like Illustrator, Fireworks, Dreamweaver and Flash, that will let you build outstanding creations. And that brings me to my final point... Excellent Integration Into the Rest of Adobe’s Powerful Creative Suite Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop CS4 Extended are great tools in their own right, but they’re also a fantastic key element to the Creative Suite software bundles. The suite integrates seamlessly, with great file compatibility, and useful additional programs like Adobe Bridge, which is a centralized media manager. The Creative Suite 4 Master Collection sits together as an unparalleled family of software that will equip you for any creative digital project you could dream of. Of course, some people will use the features above more than others, but generally speaking these are things that most Photoshop users would really miss if they were taken away. If you’re drooling already, then that probably means two things: A) You’re not a Photoshop owner already, B) You should be. Go buy it. :P On the other hand, if the list above seems entirely unimportant to you, or worse, completely baffling, it’s very likely that Photoshop CS is not at all the thing for you. In the Photoshop vs Elements battle, Elements may well knock Photoshop for 6 where you’re concerned. Let’s look at the flip side - Here are some of the top features a Photoshop Elements user would miss if they used Photoshop: Quick Fix Mode Quick Fix mode is a special mode in the Photoshop Elements editor which allows super-fast enhancements to be made to photographs to correct common problems, like contrast and brightness adjustments and color correction. The interface makes this really simple and accessible, and affords a good deal of the benefit of features like channels, without the complexity that full control introduces. Elements also provides one-click solutions like the ‘Smart Fix’ option, where the program makes a (remarkably intelligent) guess at what needs to be done, and just does it for you.  Automatic Red Eye Removal While we’re talking about automatic abilities, Photoshop Elements also has an automatic function for removing red eye, which is great if you mostly take snaps of the family. There’s a red eye removal tool for more manual control, but also the option to correct red eye in a whole photo, or even a whole album, at the click of a button. This is the kind of task that Photoshop Elements streamlines better than Photoshop, but beware trusting automatic fixes implicitly – they’re not perfect and they do sometimes misjudge.  The Photoshop Elements Organizer The Organizer didn’t even exist in the first two version of Photoshop Elements, but since its introduction it’s become a truly integral part. To my mind, it comprises not far under half of the program these days for most consumers. The Organizer allows you to view and organize all your photos in many ways, tag them, search them and share them with other people. More recent versions have even added advanced abilities like ‘face tagging’, where Photoshop Elements will automatically detect people’s faces in your photos and allow you to use that information, and ‘smart albums’ which allow you to create dynamic collections of photos like ‘All the photos that contain John’. The Organizer also introduced many different ways to share your photos with other people. You can create slide shows, photo books, image galleries to go on a web page, calendars, cards, CDs and E-Mails to send your photos to your friends and family. This is all supported by a fairly good range of frames, backgrounds, shapes and other artwork to adorn your creations. The Organizer isn’t for everyone – I know plenty of people who prefer not to use it at all. But for many home users, particularly those who mainly bought Photoshop Elements to use with their digital cameras, the Organizer is Photoshop Elements’ biggest asset.  Slightly Different Toolset Photoshop Elements also includes some tools that Photoshop doesn’t. They’re mainly relatively simplistic tools, not focused on adding power, but on making things easier. The Straighten Tool makes it really simple to level out a crooked image. This is of course possible using tools like rotate and crop, but the Straighten Tool simplifies the process. The Cookie Cutter tool is another example. This second list is shorter, but these are the things that are just unique to Photoshop Elements, that Photoshop doesn’t contain at all. There are many tools and features that are shared between the two programs as well. In those areas, the Photoshop version usually offers more advanced options for complete control and fine tuning, while the Photoshop Elements version offers less options to keep the feature simple, but still provides the core of its usefulness. So Bottom Line, Which One Is For Me? These are of course not comprehensive lists of differences. If you really want that, (and I can almost guarantee you don’t, even if you think you do), you can always go read the manual. But that’s not likely to be very fun. So I say again – try them out! In the end, only you can compare Photoshop and Photoshop Elements for the purposes you envisage for them. The battle of Adobe Photoshop vs Elements isn’t really a battle at all – it’s a choice. And it’s not made by Adobe, or by me. It’s made by you. But hopefully I’ve given you the information you need to make that choice well. There’s no single ‘right answer’. Many people will tell you that the right answer is the one with the most features, the most well known, the cheapest, the most expensive or just the one that they used first. Many people will tell you a lot of stuff, in fact. Even about who and what you should listen to on the matter. Personally, I’d say that you don’t have to listen to them, and you don’t have to listen to me. I’ve kept it to the facts in this article. If you haven’t found out what you need to know, take a look below at other people’s comments, or do some more reading elsewhere. I’ve hardly mentioned cost at all so far; everybody else starts there and I think it just distracts people away from really seeing what they need. But I would never advise anyone to spend recklessly or beyond their budget. Photoshop is more expensive than Photoshop Elements, that’s a fact. But you’re still reading, and that means you’re smart enough to consider your needs carefully and not spend recklessly, so I trust that you can work this one through. It’s just worth pointing out that if you buy Photoshop, in addition to the higher initial price, there will be a higher cost if you want to upgrade again 5 years down the line, and possibly an added cost if you want to buy a higher specification computer to run the program, particularly if your current computer isn't adequate, and needs more memory or a faster processor, etc. I’ll provide one other special resource for you. If you have a specific question about Photoshop vs Photoshop Elements (and only that issue, all other questions will be ignored if asked here to keep this as a concise, useful resource), you can ask it below, and we’ll do our best to get you an answer. Once you’re done considering, buckle up for the ride and go get it. Maybe you’ve decided to stick with the form of Photoshop that you’ve got, but you think you should upgrade to a newer version. If you’re thinking about upgrading to a newer version of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, take a look at the 'should I upgrade?' article for Photoshop Elements Upgrades or Photoshop Upgrades. |
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