Mostly about my amusement

Tag: Photoshop Elements (page 1 of 1)

Photoshop Elements 7 pet peeves

I used Photoshop Elements 6 and liked it.  It worked and let me touch up my photos quickly and efficiently. I liked it so much that when PSE 7 came out, I paid for an online upgrade as soon as I could.

PSE 7 broke the small things. With version 6, the photo downloader just worked. When removable media was inserted into my PC, the service would see image files and pop up with a “Are you ready to download them now?” This was a feature that I liked and my installation of PSE 7, this just does not work.

I have to launch the photo pownloader by hand, select the media and then I’m good to go. It’s a small point but a pet peeve of mine. This after un-installing the software, wiping out all traces of it on the disk, my %AppData% folder, and in the registry. Twice.

The second pet peeve is the offer to backup/synchronize my photos on Adobe’s site. I get asked the following question more than half the time when I start PSE 7:

Hey Stupid. I see that you are not smart enough to use the free 2GBs of storage that Adobe provides you to save your files when your house burns down.

Do you

1) Want to stop being a moron?

2) Sign up for some real space at a fee?

3) Continue to jeopardize your standing in the family by not backing up online now?

I exaggerate but not by much.  The pet peeve is that I’ve been ask this question almost 50 times now. At what point does PSE 7 and Abobe get it? I have ~14,000 photos on my WD 1TB MyBook, it takes up 105 GBs of space. If I lose them I’ll feel bad, but I’ll just keep taking more pictures.

My last pet peeve is the thumbnail generation. Sometimes, not always, it refuses to generate a thumbnail for an image until I’ve browsed to that image. It’s as if it’s saying “Oh, you want to preview that file?”

Other than these points PSE 7 is okay. I rarely get into heavy editing and usually just adjust the brightnes and contrast. Since my files are all in RAW I also get to fix the white balance. The final results of my editing are worth putting up on Flickr.