Have you ever used Photoshop Elements or CorelDRAW? If you’re a professional designer, probably not. In all likelihood, you rely on Adobe’s Creative Suite. You use Photoshop for bitmap imaging, Illustrator for vector artwork, and InDesign (or Quark) for layouts. And if you work in an in-house creative department, where you have to have the industry-standard apps, this same setup would also make perfect sense.

Photoshop Elements and the Corel line of products aren’t the most popular apps out there, but they do have their uses.

However, recent updates to Photoshop Elements and the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite make these programs worth considering. They might be a useful additions or a cost-saving substitute. Especially in a freelance environment, where you perhaps can’t always plunk down thousands for the latest releases, Photoshop Elements and CorelDRAW Graphics Suite may save you money. You might also get some new features that you won’t find in the Adobe favorites.

In this post, we’ll take a look at Photoshop Elements 6. Later this week, we’ll dive deep into CorelDRAW.

Photoshop Elements 6

I know quite a few designers who still use versions of Photoshop that predate the Creative Suite. It’s totally understandable. Most just don’t have the time to do a big upgrade right now. Still, they’re missing out on some great features. The powerful retouching and selection tools included in the most recent versions of Photoshop are incredibly useful and can save users loads of time. Fortunately, the latest update to Photoshop Elements includes some of these items, like the Quick Select, Spot Healing, and Refine Edge tools. These alone justify a $99 expenditure, especially if you’re not planning to upgrade to a CS-level version of Photoshop anytime soon.

If you spend a lot of time organizing digital photos and making minor adjustments, you might also want to consider Photoshop Elements 6. Often, it’s all you need. For example, if your computer is an older model and slows down when you open Photoshop and Bridge at the same time, you could just use Elements for the basic operations. Image management is a breeze in the program, and most of the automatic photo editing tools do a surprisingly good job. Most simple tasks can be performed quickly in Elements, meaning Photoshop can be saved for the big jobs.

I think the latest version of Elements is also perfect for folks with blogs. You can quickly edit and save your images for the Web, and keep them organized with tags, all without spending oodles of time in Photoshop. All in all, I think Photoshop Elements 6 is a pretty good option for some users.

In my next post, I’ll share my thoughts on the latest version of CorelDRAW, another second-tier application that has its merits.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 1:41 pm and is filed under Graphic Design, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.