What is the best Elements Version

Hi splashinfashion, welcome to PSE&M!

That’s a hard question to answer. One’s favorite version of Elements may not be someone else’s. I don’t believe it is a matter of which Elements version is the best one but which version best meets your needs and interests.

If you didn’t like Elements 11, you may not like Elements 15 either. In Elements 11 Adobe did a major overhaul of this program. Except for a big change in Elements 12 in which Adobe removed several features, the changes in the features/tools in Elements 13, 14, and 15 are not that many. Basically they consisted of adding new features/tools (some brought over from Photoshop) and enhancing some of the old ones.

My recommendation is . . .

- As you like Elements 10, install it on your new computer.
- Install Elements 11 and give it another chance.

Doing the above is really important if you were a user of any one of the features which were removed from Elements 12. Some of these features can be placed back in this version but not in Elements 13, 14, and 15.

What features from previous versions are not available in Adobe Photoshop Elements 12?

- Download the free trial of Elements 15 (30-day) and test the waters. In this way you will be able to make an informed decision, one based on your needs and interests.

You may also want to check this thread to get an idea of what Elements 15 offers. (There is a link to a chart comparing various versions of Elements, which you may find helpful).

Photoshop Elements 15 -- Resources

As to Premiere Elements . . .

We don’t have a board devoted to Premiere Elements  We usually recommend that questions/inquiries about this program be posted on the Adobe Premiere Elements forum where you can get timely and expert advice from this program's gurus -- Steve Grisetti and Co.

Sepiana,

From an earlier post of yours,


If it's not too much trouble, could you briefly mention which features were removed in version 12 (and later)? Simply the ones that first come to mind...

I bought 13 a couple of years ago, but 11 came free with a new Epson printer I bought... that's apparently the year some big changes were made. I'm not interested in all the whiz-bang "features" but I wonder which are the substantive changes. I used 9 for many years... but I really like that 13's Organizer has the option to list files alphabetically - makes them so much easier to find, as opposed to "newest" or "oldest".

Thanks... and Happy New Year!

Paul

Major Major:

Sheesh... sorry, is my face red!

Paul

We currently have two versions, Elements 7 and Elements 12.

I wish Adobe would leave the format alone and just repair and improve upon the earlier versions.

Both my wife and myself very much prefer E7 over E12; we enjoy the screen layout and coloring of E7 and despise that of E12, which we find to be very inconvenient to perform the same tasks.

There are a few features that E12 does have that I wish could be added to E7, listed below:

1. Load/install actions by pushing buttons in the full-edit window

2. Access and employ actions in the full-edit window

3. Ability to communicate with other compatible editing programs as if they were plug-ins

4. "Content aware" feature with the healing brush

5. Very useful "refine selection" feature that really improves extracting hair and such from backgrounds

6. RAW editor compatible with more recent camera models


There are at least as many E7 features missing from E12; one that really stands out is the absence of the "magic extractor"

The organizer of E7 is way better than E12; however, one big annoyance of the E7 (and previous) organizer is that it changes the "date/time taken" stamp in the exif data; plus, when writing tags and captions to the exif data, Elements completely replaces the image file, filling the recycle bin with the originals, renaming files and corrupting data while doing so; I have not yet investigated as to whether these faults have been corrected in E12.

The above mentioned problems with the organizer led me to investigate and employ three other FREE image organizing programs that do not have those issues; Digikam, XNView, and Picajet; it is hard for me to name a favorite between the three; I lean heavily toward Digikam, but there are features unique to each of the other two that keep them on my task-bar.

The FREE program FastStone is hardly ever closed on either of our computers and we do all of our initial image viewing and sorting/culling in FastStone; choose an image, or a whole group of images, click "E", and they magically appear in the Elements editor window, much quicker than sending them there from Elements own organizer.


In light of our own experiences, if we had to make a choice between versions, Elements 7 would definitely be our pick; add Elements + and it becomes a very powerful program.


Thanks for reading.

I have the Faststone Viewer but I haven’t really investigated all it can do, indeed I hardly ever use it. I didn’t realise that you could associate it with PSE.
Until now I have just used Windows Explorer or File Explorer as it’s now known in Windows 10 to view my photos but I must try out Faststone instead especially now I know that I can take a photo from there straight into PSE.

Thanks for mentioning that Buckskin.

Maybe I am misunderstanding this statement too. I also use Windows/File Explorer to view my photos but I can take a photo from there straight into Elements (as well as Photoshop) by just using the Open With command. They will open straight in the Editor and in the Raw Converter if they are Raw files. The only drawback is that I cannot use this command if I want to send multiple files at once.