I am starting to love Elements

[guntoter]

OK, OK........I know this is a Canon forum, but I am new to Elements, and I am really starting to get impressed with the things you can do with this program. As little as I paid for it, I wonder just how amazing Light Room or CS3 are. I picked up Elements 6.0 for around $80 a couple of months ago. It has been a fun experience to see what this puppy will do.

I took this pic at a friend's granddaughter soccer game (trophy day). She and all who say it couldn't believe what I did.

[SpecialK]

I started using it about a month ago. It replaces the Pentax RAW software and another software I had to use for dust-spotting. I don't use the Organizer or other parts - just the "edit" section for now.

Nice result you got there.

[guntoter]

SpecialK,
I think the organizer may be useful, but like you, I haven't taken the time to learn to use it. So I don't know the benefits of it. My versison also does Canon Raw files. I have Elements 5.0 in my home puter, and it doesn't do Canon Raw, or if it does, I can't figure it out.
I would like to make the same edits to groups of files that need the same edits, but I might have to upgrade to Light Room to get that feature.
I recently took shots of a soccer game in bright sunlight. Elements helped greatly to get rid of the harsh shadows on faces.

[GaryS]

I already love Elements! I still use Version 4, because I'm too cheap to upgrade, but v4 does do XTi RAW files, so to get V5 to work you just need to update to the newer Adobe Camera RAW (free).

[guntoter]

GaryS,
Thanks for the info. I will do that. Where do you go to get the upgrade?

[Mark_48]

GaryS,
Thanks for the info. I will do that. Where do you go to get the upgrade?

A couple of ways......

1) Open Elements and click open the "Help" tab. There is an option to check for updates.

or....

2) At Adobe's site click "Support" > "Updates" and find what you need from there

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=40&platform=Windows

[TheWengler]

I use PSE5 which works well for almost everything I need. Update the RAW editor as suggested. There's a 30 day Lightroom 2 trial you can download too if you're interested.

[SpecialK]

SpecialK,
I think the organizer may be useful, but like you, I haven't taken the time to learn to use it. So I don't know the benefits of it. My versison also does Canon Raw files. I have Elements 5.0 in my home puter, and it doesn't do Canon Raw, or if it does, I can't figure it out.
I would like to make the same edits to groups of files that need the same edits, but I might have to upgrade to Light Room to get that feature.
I recently took shots of a soccer game in bright sunlight. Elements helped greatly to get rid of the harsh shadows on faces.

I don't use tags to group my images, which is the main feature of Organizer as far as I can tell.

I had to get the latest Adobe Camera RAW plug in to recognize the K20D PEFs, otherwise no problem.

You can open multiple files (shift-click) and do the same processing to them in a batch. Also rename, resize (but only in one direction at a time :-( or watermark via "process multiple files".

[Phill D]

I started to use the organiser to inport my pictures & label them in date folders but it is pretty slow. Might just be my old PC though.

[guntoter]

A couple of ways......

1) Open Elements and click open the "Help" tab. There is an option to check for updates.

or....

2) At Adobe's site click "Support" > "Updates" and find what you need from there

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=40&platform=Windows

I tried both methods. The 1st one gave me an error saying that the part of my program that looks for updates has been uninstalled???? I uninstalled the entire program & then reinstalled. Same result.

I tired going to the website. I did download the Camera Raw file for Elements 5.0, but it still acted as if I didn't have that feature???

I will keep trying, but it is getting frustrating. The good thing is that I have Elements 6.0 loaded on my work laptop, so I can use it to do the camera raw pics.

[talkingdog]

Guntoter you have to replace the raw converter in elements with the downloaded one. I think it is in the file format folder. it should have a suffix of .8bi. Change the old file to .old and insert the new one. Elements needs to be closed to do this. when you open it next time it should use the new converter.

[guntoter]

Guntoter you have to replace the raw converter in elements with the downloaded one. I think it is in the file format folder. it should have a suffix of .8bi. Change the old file to .old and insert the new one. Elements needs to be closed to do this. when you open it next time it should use the new converter.

The file I downloaded was a .8bi file. I didn't know about renaming the old file. Thanks, I will try that procedure.

I figured it was something I was doing wrong, just didn't know what.

I love this forum. Great help here.

[Mark_48]

What talkingdog said with a picture. Program Files > Adobe > Elements

Copy the new 8bi file into that folder.

Wierd about the updater not working. In my Program Files folder there is a folder called Common Files. In that there is an Adobe folder that has a folder with updater utilities. Not sure if that was created with another Adobe product or not.

[Mark_48]

Once you restart Elements you can check the new version from the Help tab. Click on the listed plugin from the dropdown, it'll popup a version window

[talkingdog]

there is a problem with e6 that if you have multiple processers you will get broken thumbnails on import. I you do a search in the Elements Village forum there is a work around that is supposed to help with this. I just ran into this problem the other day the first time I imported from my card reader about 30 pictures didn't make it. If you have e5 I would use that to import. I think I will start using Dpp for the import. Takes to much time to repair the files.