Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 Premiere Elements 3.0 Bundle [OLDER VERSION] Reviews

• NO Stars...WARNING..Prem Elements MAY NOT WORK

  
  By A5A2DU8TV9SME on 2006-10-13
  I bot & rec'd delivery today from Amazon...Premiere Elements will NOT install...reason from Adobe website: Many CPUs do not have SSE2 support and will not work with Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0: Intel Pentium III, AMD Athlon, AMD Athlon XP, or AMD Athlon XP-M. note: "WILL NOT WORK"....It won't even install...Amazon should NOT sell this product!! Or should place LARGE warnings...$130 thrown away....can NOT get thru to Adobe tech support...so a COMPLETE RIP-OFF!!!
  
  
  
  

• Premiere Elements Great - Photoshop 5.0 a Waste!

  
  By A3LPSNRYP4I1RG on 2006-11-03
  I purchased this bundle. I have Photoshop Elements 4.0 and the 5.0 is a waste of money! It doesn't have many of the common features the 4.0 has (undo, sharpen, brushes, save) and red eye works worse than ever. It's a big step backward for Adobe. If you're considering Photoshop Elements, I would suggest 4.0 or even 3.0 over this new one. On the other hand, Premiere Elements 3.0 is fun and excellent to use for slide shows with still pics as well as video footage with numerous effects you can add. This would be great for burning DVD's for family and friends as gifts. I rate 5 stars for Premiere Elements and less than 1 star for Elements 5.0.
  
  

• Please get it

  
  By AMYG28A2GVG93 on 2006-10-18
  I started with Adobe Elements Photoshop 3 and Premier 1. This is my 2nd upgrad. My computer is 2 years old and I'm glad I bought Pentium 4 with a lot of RAM and hard drive. This upgrade is great. Major improvement from Elements 4&2. If you used Premier 2 extensively you will find that this upgrade will make your work much easier. An iprovement to axccess all menues, love the new time line (now it has two time lines were you can switch between them, the old one + the new one were you can go to each scene in a click. You can narrate directly to your timeline. I tried my USB mic, it did not work. I read a little and tried my old serial mic, it worked beautifuly. During narration, premier will add a new audio segment in the timeline. The best way is to turn off the sound and used headphone to hear your video and narrate during playback, otherwise you'll get an echo (you'll be recording your voice and the playback at the same time).
  Major improvement in photoshop too.
  Just double check system requirement before purchasing. It is worth upgrading your copmuter to take advantage of these programs.
  
  

• Premiere Element 3.0 Review

  
  By AB4PSJAQJR6IJ on 2006-11-13
  Great Product and very feature rich for its price. However be careful there is a SERIOUS performance issue when you add Transitions. Screen actions then take an average 30 seconds. Pls see Adobe User Forums link below. Adobe call it a design "feature" and refuse to fix it. You have to use Video 2 track to avoid slowdown. Note that the Sceneline uses Video 1 by default and when you move all the dat to Video 2 Sceneline compreeses all the images into one image and becomes useless.
  
  
  [...]
  
  
  
  

• Initial Review of Premiere Elements 3.0

  
  By A3RSEQHLRVQAJ3 on 2006-10-13
  So far I am very impressed with this product. PE3 Installed without any problems. After struggling with Pinnacle Studio 9 for a long time, I have finally found a product to replace it!!! No crashes, very fast program.
  I rendered a 30 minute video in 45 minutes compared to 2 hours in PS9.
  
  The quality of the DVD looked as good as the original DV Tape.
  
  more to come...
  
  
  
• Stable; right feature set; good product integration
  By A17N5FRV817OY9 on 2007-01-10
  This is quality software.
  
  - It has the right feature set. No superfluous stuff like backup software and DVD duplication software, as is the case with Roxio MyDVD9.
  
  - The user interface is simple and intuitive enough that I was able to start creating a DVD from multiple video clips of our baby that I had scattered around. I didn't use the help file, I just installed it and started. I only referred to the manual for advanced functions.
  
  - And advanced functions it certainly has. I like the ability to create multiple audio and video tracks separately and blend them together. I like using Photoshop Elements to create slide shows in my DVDs by porting them to Premiere Elements with a click - it's simple, cleaner and quicker than any other product.
  
  - The output stage where one encodes a DVD is simple and reliable. I have a relatively slow PC, and certainly didn't want any error messages coming up several hours into an encoding job for creating an hour-long DVD.
  
  - The integration between Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements goes more than skin deep. They share the same user interface, and one can send pictures and videos from one package to the other.
  
  - It has never crashed, even in Windows.
  
  
• Overall a great product!
  By A2LIZ93K1IGY3N on 2007-03-08
  Our photo and video editing softwares were both very basic and "old", so we decided to upgrade a couple of months ago. After reading many reviews on different bundles, we decided to get the Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 Premiere Elements 3.0 bundle. We've played around with the Premiere Elements a bit, and it's really awesome. Much better than the Pinnacle Studio 8 we had before. All the basic functions are easy to use and very intuitive, though we haven't gone and figured out the more advanced features yet. The Photoshop Elements is a wonderful tool, as well. We recently had to scan in a lot of old pictures (as in 20+ year old b/w photographs). They needed a lot of touching up, and Elements 5.0 worked wonderfully for that. I could adjust the lighting and sharpening, fix the colors and scratches, and the pictures turned out amazing. You'd never be able to tell they were scanned images from such old photographs. The program is also very intuitive. I could do all the things I wanted to do without having to read the manual. Of course, I'm still just touching on the surface of what all is possible, and I plan on reading the manual and studying the program in more detail once I have the time to do so, but for what I need right now, it's easy to use and does a good job. There are only two things I have to comment on that I don't like about the Adobe bundle, and they are the reason why I'm giving 4 stars instead of 5.
  1. The stated minimum requirements for this bundle are 512MB RAM. That's what we had on our computer, and while the program worked, it was so painfully slow that it wasn't feasible to really use it. We ended up upgrading to 1GB, and it's been working great since. So if you have less than 1GB RAM, make sure you upgrade before getting this software!
  2. The red-eye fix in Photoshop Elements, or lack thereof. There is an auto red-eye fix, but it doesn't work very well. It finds red eyes in all kinds of places, just not where they actually are. Sometimes it covers half the face, sometimes only half of the eye, etc. etc. etc. There is an option to manually show the program where the red eye is, but it still doesn't work right. Maybe there's another trick I haven't found out about yet, but as of right now, I usually give the fix tool a shot, and if it doesn't work I take the picture back into my old editing software and fix the red eye there. I'm really very disappointed with this, as fixing red eyes is something you have to do quite frequently when editing pictures.
  Overall, the software has been very easy and fun to work with, even for an amateur like me. :o) If Adobe can adjust the minimum requirements recommendation and fix the red-eye fix tool, it's going to definitely deserve 5 points.
  
  
• How many versions can you fit into 18 months CS would have been cheaper
  By A345G688Y4E4OB on 2006-12-19
  Just how many times in a year has Adobe come up with an upgrade you "must" buy. It is like a machine how often they have the next must have and as you can see some people spend the money and find the software worse than before. I bot Version 3 and before I could finish the Photoshop Elements Users by Mikkel Aaland, a very good author and book, out comes 4 and I bought for my Mac and now version 5 is out in no time. Wow I could have bought Photoshop CS2 for the money spent on elements or Aperture.
  
  
  
• Deleted Photos
  By ADMEN6KCEJQ1X on 2006-12-26
  I am a longtime Photoshop user, and bought the Elements bundle to be able to do slideshows. After getting Photoshop Elements to get rid of red eye, I exported the photos to Premier Elements. Once it burned my DVD, all of the photos were gone from my system; the DVD images were very fuzzy (and I had selected the highest resolution and had plenty of disc space left over).
  
  I am very disappointed in these products, and would caution others in using them. If you do, be sure to work from copies of your photos (which I did fortunately).
  
  
• Great Software - No Rebate
  By A22LWIN9LYOS40 on 2007-02-08
  I would easily give this software 5 stars by itself, but I simply wanted to write this review to tell anyone considering it that Adobe will NOT honor your rebate. The first reply they sent me was that I was missing one of the proofs of purchase. Luckily, I had taken pictures of the box and all of the receipts, so I sent them these pictures along with copies of all of the receipts. I then received a 2nd notice saying that the receipt is from an "unqualified store" which I can only assume means Amazon.com.
  
  Great software though. Just figured I would warn everyone.
  
  
• Review on PSE only
  By A2M04IWKVZNTKX on 2007-01-16
  I haven't had an opportunity to try Premiere Elements thoroughly, so this review is based on Photoshop only.
  
  I wanted a new photo editing program to replace Micrografx 7, which I'd had for years. One thing I wanted was a larger selection of automated features. Every week I take pictures of animals for the Humane Society, and I wanted decent shots without spending hours fixing common problems (poor lighting, green and yellow eyes, etc.). I also had gotten a lot of old family photos that I wanted to restore, but there were too many to manually fix every flaw. While the Auto Smart Fix isn't perfect, it frequently gets a shot good enough for my needs with a single click. If that doesn't do what I need, there are plenty of other tools (both automated and manual) for color, lighting etc. It would have taken hours to touch up some of my old color photos without features like "Remove Color Cast" and "Adjust Color For Skin Tone." I've also found the Spot Healing Brush is a great tool for fixing dust and scratches without adjusting the whole photo and sacrificing image quality.
  
  In addition to automated fixes, I wanted more advanced features for fine tuning. Tools like Auto Smart Fix are a great starting point, especially when the picture doesn't need to be perfect, but it rarely gets a really special picture as good as it could be. One of those tools was layers. I've tried working with layers in another program, and PSE was far superior. It's also very easy to fine-tune colors without spending a lot of time. When I'm not in a hurry, I can almost always discover something new that helps me to take my pictures to a new level.
  
  Overall, I'm very pleased with PSE 5.0. However, I didn't give it 5 stars, largely because it lacks toolbar shortcuts for tasks like "Undo" and "Open" that were available in PSE 4.0. This isn't a big deal for me because I prefer the Undo History palette over the shortcut, and I like to use Ctrl+O or the File Menu instead of the Open shortcut. These omissions don't seem to make any sense, though, and they could be very annoying for some people. There are also fewer Sharpen tools than in 4.0, though I've found what remains is usually sufficient. There are some nice new features that version 4.0 lacked, such as "Convert to Black & White," but these aren't enough to justify an upgrade. Many people would probably be happier with the older version, which is still available on Amazon.
  
  If you don't have recent photo editing software, I highly recommend PSE 5.0. If you're satisfied with what you have, or if you already own PSE 4.0, save your money.
  
  
• Something important you should know
  By A18C7KJ91ZJP0M on 2007-01-10
  Overall, this software bundle is a great value, but there is a problem with Premiere Elements. The first time I used Premiere to make a movie, it would take a long time for the software to do even the simplest tasks such as editing text or changing the volume of a clip. I later found out that this is a bug. Fortunately, it can be fixed by moving the video from track one to track two (leaving track one blank). Somehow this solves the problem and everything works great.
  
  
• Worth Your Money
  By A3719PO0A8B4O5 on 2007-04-19
  I initially purchased Creator 9 to do the same thing this software does, but the only thing is it didnt hang my computer when it came down to burn the DVD. This software is pretty much easy to use, comes with two (Bibles) manuals, plenty of information in there to creat some good videos. I recommend buying this or you can always buy Creator 9 have it crash your system and then spend a few days trying to review other products out there that have gotten good reviews such as this one. You will be happy with the videos you make. You can make a video containing still images (pictures), video from camcorder camera or from your computer, add text in the movies, add background music, its awesome. I must say again it wont hang your system. Please get it, your family and yourself wont be disappointed.
  
  
• Disappointing; no guide book
  By A2895AZID2EVUI on 2007-07-13
  The software itself seems fine, about what I expected. But the disks came without the full-size instruction book that you get when you buy the software off the shelf and from some other Websites. To make matters worse, the links from the software to the online help don't work, so that is not a good alternative to having the book. You can download a pdf version of the book and print it out, but that's lame. So all in all, I'm feeling rather ripped off. The product summary should have made clear that there was no book. If I'd known that I would have bought elsewhere, even if it had cost me a bit more.
  
  
• Better than the previous version
  By AV5OYCF0TNUZZ on 2007-01-06
  I believe this is probably the best of the photo organizers, though it is not perfect.
  It is only because I took time to go through the learning curve that I feel I can make this claim. First it is very important to ensure your camera's date/time is correct, as this is the default sort order. You can manually change this once photos are imported, but it can be a little time consuming -- better to get this right upfront.
  
  Be aware the Premere component requires a computer processor with SSE2 support, a feature not likely found in older CPU's. also, to make photo slideshows that play on a DVD you have to have the Premiere component. The standalone PSE can't do this. It is time consuming, but helped somewhat by automation, though I wish PSE would create a wizard that allowed me to set all parameters upfront and then I could go to bed and wake up with a completed DVD waiting in the morning. This is presently a two step process. I don't really use the Premiere Elements component, except for making slide shows on DVD.
  
  I also wish it had the ability to change the photo order within a group of tags without having to create a collection. This would allow easier organization during a two camera shoot. I have to change the photos date presently to get it organized. Alternatly, I think the ability to sort on metadata other than datestamp would be useful.
  
  The underlying photo organizer is based on the datestamp embedded in the metadata of the digital image. If you want a particular order, you have to create a collection.
  
  Photoediting in ANY app is not simple. You have to take the time to learn it if you want really good results. Computers are just not there yet, though this tool covers most of the bases and does a pretty good job with the most common issues. PSE has tremendous power in it's Photo editing toolset. A third party book is essential if you want to get the most out of it.
  
  But overall, this is probably the most robust consumer-grade photo organizing/editing tool out there. It is reasonably well supported and each version gets significantly better.
  
  
• Great products, very powerful
  By A2RP303LL6U91C on 2007-01-05
  I tried both the Premier Elements 2.0 and the Pinnacle 10 as a free download and was happy w/ the results I was getting from the PE product more so then the Pinnacle. I went ahead and purchased the bundled product with Photoshop elements since I take lots of digital photos as well. The video software worked great, the forums that Adobe keeps are updated and very active. I had an issue, posted it up on the site and had very quick insightful responses.
  I really have enjoyed the Photoshop Elements package, tons of features and the editing of the photos is seemless. I would HIGHLY recommend this bundle if you are interested in a very powerful package at a good price. Well worth the money
  
  
• Photoshop Elements 5.0
  By A2QUGEY5P6LHP1 on 2007-01-10
  Product has glitch known to Adobe. The slideshow maker blows up many PCs. This means pan and zoom for motion effects are unavailable. Since that feature was our reason for buying we are getting a full refund fron Adobe. They make you jump through many hoops to get a refund.
  
  
• Great Product.
  By A3F8007GJGS95N on 2007-03-20
  I use Photoshop as well as the other Adobe products in CS2 on a daily basis at work. This product provides a reasonably priced alternative for home use as well as providing a means for turning your home pictures and movies into a DVD. Amazon is wonderful about getting the products you order to you in a timely fashion.
  
  
• Comprehensive, Easy to Use and Affordable
  By AKL08WKBR1OBR on 2007-01-05
  Adobe's bundle of Photoshop Elements and Premier Elements is just the ticket for folks who have an interest in digital photography and digital processing of video, but cannot afford or justify the high-end program equivalents. I've used Photoshop Elements for a few years and when I bought my Sony HC-90 just over a year ago, it was natural to seek out a similar application from a vendor I have been satisfied with. Both programs are easy to use for the beginner, yet have sophistication behind the scenes that you can learn to access independently as your skills grow. There really is no reason to try and utilize the often obtuse and under-powered applications that some with most digital still and video cameras...you can do so much more with this bundle. And if you only take stills, Adobe Photoshop Elements sold separately is a great choice.
  
  The only thing that I've been less than pleased with is the constant change to the user interface with each subsequent version. One "bad" change was the elimination of the buttons for "Save" and "Save As" from the icon bar at the top of the application window. One has to use the drop down "File" menu to access them at this point. Annoying, but not life threatening!
  
  
• photoshop elements 5.0 / Premiere elements 3.0 bundle
  By A1H1QLXEO0UNFB on 2007-01-11
  Fantastic products. All the user friendly power of Photoshop without the cost and lengthy learning curve. Great for amateur to professional. Highly recommend and the two products work seamlessly with each other. I have made lots of slideshows with my photos and mix them in with movies to form very good quality DVDs.
  
  
• Photoshop Elements Fine, Premiere Elements Not
  By A8TIH5HEJ1M23 on 2007-01-16
  I am well pleased with Photoshop Elements 5.0 and would give it 5 stars, but I cannot say the same for Premiere Elements 3.0. Premiere Elements is an easy to use product and has some good features, but the quality of DVD I have been able to produce is worthless, in my opinion. I have tried using it to make a DVD of my digital photos with menus, etc. The individual shots are nice high resolution images when viewed in other than DVD preview or the final DVD, where they are too fuzzy to be enjoyed. If there is some setting I need to change to improve this I haven't found it. Other reviews I have read do not seem to reflect this problem. Maybe it's me and I don't know what is causing it.
  
  
• It's a great package!!!
  By A36CLOAPBX3BCN on 2007-05-15
  I'm learning how to use this software. Please keep in mind, I've not done any video editing or photo editing before (ok...a little but very little). Since I'm starting brand new, I read as many reviews as possible. Generally, this product seemed to shine most everywhere I checked. After having used it (doing a project for a retirement at work), I'm convinced that I could actually do some pretty neet stuff with pics and video. I'm looking forward to it. I've learned so much just putting this project together. I really want to do some things with old Christmas video and pics as well as Family reunions, vacations, etc.
  
  It will inspire you, that's for sure. And take it from me, if I can learn something like this, you can too!!!
  
  
• Great Bundle For Casual Photographers
  By AIOXM28087TNC on 2007-06-10
  After much comparing with Corel I choose this bundle. Be patient if you have not worked with layers in photography. Once you learn layers and how to manipulate them you can produce great special effects for your photographs. For the price this package has the most features. I'm very pleased with the programs.
  
  
• Great buy and fun software
  By A1KFVEDDNABPJA on 2007-06-23
  I love this software, both programs. Regular Photoshop is too complicated for me. Photoshop Elements gives all kinds of options for editing a photo, but it isn't that complicated.
  
  Putting Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements together was a brilliant idea, as they complement each other. Regular Premiere is too expensive and complicated, but Premiere Elements does everything I need and more. And the price for both programs is a good deal.
  
  I had previously used Studio 10 (Pinnacle) and I'd procrastinated in working on my video clips because I couldn't figure out how to do something. Both of these programs are user friendly, in my opinion.
  
  For anyone who enjoys digital photography and digital video, I highly recommend this set of programs.
  
  One feature that is particularly convenient is the ease to create scenes on a DVD, by marking the place where you wish to start each scene. It is also simple to label each scene with a graphic that can be imported from your hard drive.
  
  There are lots of fun things to do to create a professional looking DVD, and you can also make slide shows using either Photoshop Elements or Premiere Elements and save them with your favorite music in the background.
  
  
• Utterly non-intuitive interface
  By A36CCV2B7XQGJK on 2007-07-18
  I changed to Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 from ACD See, and I really regret it. ACD See (and most other photo programs) had an intuitive interface that was not very complicated. On the other hand, even the most basic functions are complicated and non-intuitive in Adobe Photoshop Elements. For instance, right now I can't even figure out how to simply get it to display all of the photos I have in a given folder! It took me 15 minutes or more just to figure out how to resize a photo! These tasks took me no time at all to figure out in ACD See. This program seems powerful, but you need to invest many hours in learning how to use it before you stop getting incredibly frustrated all of the time because simple tasks are made so difficult. The automatic red-eye reduction is cool, but it is hard to figure out how to get it to work as well, so I have had to do it manually on most pictures, anyway.
  
  
• Good serious amature editing software.
  By A256BQ0JDSYQNA on 2007-01-16
  Not as big a step up from Photoshop Elements 4.0 as I had expected, but overall worthwhile. I would like to be able to "download" photos from a CD-ROM as well as memory cards and pen drives. I always backup my memory cards to CD-ROM and sometimes have to delete the contents of my memory card, to keep shooting, before being able to upload using Photoshop.
  
  
• Great Fun
  By A1J69HNGYB32OO on 2007-01-18
  I recently upgrade from Photoshop Element 2.0 to 5.0 with the Premiere Elements 3.0 Bundle. 5.0 really has a lot of cool and fun features. It is a little slow when going back and forth between the organizer and the editor. But so far I am really enjoying working with it.
  
  
• Amazing improvements over Elements 4.0 and Premiere Elements 2.0
  By A56V1DUJ2QH4S on 2007-02-04
  Both products are easier to use than previous editions and include many new features such as fantastic scrapbooking capabilities. It is well worth the upgrade and does include the features other reviewers say are not there. They have been moved so they are actually easier to find.
  
  
• Warning! Very Addictive Software
  By A3RHLYOO9MJ8MM on 2007-05-23
  I only wanted to buy Elements 5.0 but I bought the bundle because I like extra goodies for bundled pricing. Basically, I use Elements 5.0 for my digital scrapbooking needs. After learning the basics from reading books and trial/error, I have grown to love this software. I use this software everyday as if it was my digital canvas for creating artful scrapbook pages. I build scrapbook pages/video montages for my friends, family, and dog now. I usually take my own photos with my 7.2 Sony digital camera but some of my friends/family just give the photos/videos to me to create for them. Here's a link to what I've done with a combination of both Elements 5.0 and Premier. It's so much fun! === >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqVKcdzg2Iw << === Thanks for looking and reading my mini-review!
  
  
• Dan
  By A3MT2Z2L7NY04C on 2007-01-06
  So far seems like a vary powerful program(s) but lacks a manual to help you walk through the features and how to use them. I will need to purchase additional user guides/books in order to fully utilize the potential of these programs.
  
  

• PC World
• Microsoft Money 2007 Premium [OLD VERSION]
• Quicken Personal Finances Deluxe 2007 [OLDER VERSION]
• McAfee Internet Security Suite 2007 [Old Version]
• ColorVision Spyder2 Express Win/Mac

• Photoshop Elements 5: The Missing Manual
• The Photoshop Elements 5 Book for Digital Photographers (VOICES)
• Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 and Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 Classroom in a Book Collection
• Hollywood Special Effects with Adobe Premiere Elements 3
• The Digital Photography Book