As a traditional photographer, what did you do in the darkroom? What's the difference? I get a kick out of the "old traditional photographers" who think it is not PHOTOGRAPHY if the images' pixels are changed in some way. I am 68 years old and thank the stars above for PS and LR.......and do not harken back to the good old days of the stink'n dark room. The camera can only do so much - the creative mind has no boundaries! .....though there are some too lazy to spend the time to learn "how" to use PS, LR, Painter and others.

If you don't want to spend the money on PS, download GIMP. It is free and very PS like, so I am told.

Captain:

I realize that maybe in your vernacular, steep means down hill only...Am I right in thinking in that direction?

Oh well, If that is the point, then every steep hill that I encountered with my bike had to be easy!!! No matter if it is going up or down! I guess with your thinking, I will have to give it a try to find out...I got it! After two hours and a mile traveled, I guess it was an easy steep hill! So the next hill I encountered was an easy steep hill too! I made a mile in 1.5 minutes! So all steep hills are the same! Right? It is all in how you look at them, on a Harley or Schwinn! There is no such thing as a difficult steep hill in your life, they all must be easy right, no matter the energy expended to conquer it??? It is your call.

Where this is going is this...I worked successfully for 12 years at Boeing as an illustrator on a $70,000, user friendly graphics computer, and the documents group had photoshop, on their Apple based graphics computers. I tried to watch and understand what exactly it took to make a simple graphic, let's say a red circle with a slash through it, on their machine, and I almost passed out over the complexity of that software, and the gyrations needed to make a simple circle and then that 45 degree slash through it! Somebody later, gave me an old copy of Photoshop, and the instruction book...NICE! Not really! The instruction book looked like the New York City Phone book! It was over three inches thick! Must be easy.....Right? Piece of cake!

I had Essentials in the past, but found Corel more forgiving and easy to operate. But with Kelby lurking in the wings, there is always that queasy feeling in my gut that his motivation is not to make Elements fun, but to bait the user into purchasing Photoshop...There is just enough left out, in Elements, to force the issue. And as I also stated about RAW, it too is overkill...But Nikon/Canon will keep throwing out the "Jpeg is bad!" bait just to see if we will bite.

Now unless you are in the Mensa program for the mentally blessed, then knock yourself out and purchase Photoshop! I was just suggesting to that gentleman, that if all he did was tweek his photos, then he is an excellent photographer, and that Corell was to my knowledge, the best suggestion for his photography needs.

I used to use fly swatters for eliminating flies, but found that because they were so fast, I could not always hit them, so I decided to use my 12 gauge shotgun! It was noisy, but it worked! The only draw back was this...It took days to find the remains of the fly, and that hole!!!...If you get my drift. Ha Ha!

I never liked Kelby and his Photoshop Dynasty! Have you seen the price of his Photoshop RAG? He is as bad as George Gates and Microsoft! Both are poised for world domination and raking in as much money as possible, and we are at the mercy of their, greed and desire to fill their bank accounts, at our expense!

Long live Paintshop Pro! It ain't pretty, but the price is right, and I'm happy with it! It is only $24.00 for the last iteration! Beats $750.00 for the student discounted Photoshop software! And that NYC Phone Book sized instruction book! Wow!

Digiphot2