Buy Elements 10... or not?

February 18, 2012 11:41 AM

Stick with Photoshop 6.0, or buy Elements 10?

Should I bother getting Elements 10? I'm a very part time user of the copy of Photoshop 6.0 I have, mostly cropping, sizing and color balancing a few times a month. I can get Elements 10 on sale for $50, anyone think I should upgrade?

posted by Marky to computers & internet (7 answers total)

If you're on Windows (you have a Dell, right?), get Paint.net. It does what you want, is up to date and it's free.
posted by michaelh at 11:43 AM on February 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

If you have all the features you need and use, I don't think there's ever a compelling reason to upgrade. I got layers and vectors and stopped upgrading in uh, 2006 or something, and I am not a light user.
posted by DarlingBri at 12:07 PM on February 18, 2012

If you are looking for newer features, try GIMP. It always seems to be a few steps behind PS, but it's free and does more than most people will ever need to do. A downside is that PS and the other creative suite programs are the industry standard, but that doesn't seem to be an issue in your case.
posted by amcm at 12:52 PM on February 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Have you thought about Lightroom? Does all you want really easily and is aimed much more at the photographer. it has batch resizing and colour correcting which are a godsend for creating an efficient imaging workflow.

3 is also pretty cheap at the moment with 4 on the horizon
posted by brilliantmistake at 1:01 PM on February 18, 2012

I agree with amcm about GIMP. I used to be a Photoshop and Elements user, and I found it was always crashing on my mac (in addition to having an annoying update that never full worked each time I loaded the program.)

I find GIMP is way more stable (it has crashed once but this is about 99% better than my experience with Elements). Its tools are similar. I think the fact it IS a few steps behind PS as mentioned above makes it much simpler and more intuitive for me to use. Even Elements always seemed like it was bulging with features that left me confused (though I imagine would be helpful if I were a more advanced user.)
posted by The ____ of Justice at 1:12 AM on February 19, 2012

I wouldn't. Surely by going from a full version to Elements you're downgrading, not upgrading. Stay with ps6 if just for the pen tool alone. I'm still on 5.5.
posted by ComfySofa at 1:52 AM on February 19, 2012

DO NOT buy into the version treadmill. Bob Staake, an illustrator who's done multiple covers for New Yorker, still uses Photoshop 3.0
posted by Tom-B at 4:32 AM on February 19, 2012