You may be able to simulate the effect you want with Photoshop. Select the areas you want to blur and use one of the blur filters. Costs nothing to try, and with practice you may be very happy with the results. Your cameras are quite good small sensor units. Worth keeping.

I had a similar need about a year ago, and purchased the highly regarded Panasonic ZS50. It has a 30x zoom and a viewfinder, which was essential. Unfortunately, it also has a very small sensor, and the photo quality, while excellent un-cropped, falls apart with even a small crop. I now have a rule to do all my cropping in-camera, using the zoom, and never try to crop after via PC. I had considered an advanced small sensor like a Nikon P900 and Panasonic FZ300 for more serious work, but after my experience with the FZ50, another small sensor camera has been ruled out. I might consider the Panasonic FZ-1000, with a 1" sensor. At about $700, it is probably the least expensive of the alternatives recommended above. (Not pocket size, however) In the meantime, I purchased a Sigma 18-250 from KEH for $160 for my DSLR, and it enables me to leave all my other lenses home, or in the car, if I don't think I'll need them. It is not much larger than the 18-50 kit lens, the electric focusing motor is silent, and the images are fine, if not quite as good as less range zooms.

10,603 posts in a little over 3 years. Do the math. Someone likes to read themselves writing. (Used to say hear themselves speak)

Amazon has the Sigma and Tamron equivalents for under $1,000. Not disputing your quality guarantee, but $400 may be critical to some.

Must be part of the 2%. Many of us just do not have the budget for front line lenses.

Never used it in ten years.

To answer your specific question: YES, there is a significant difference in hardware requirements from still image editing to video editing. Virtually any out of the box PC, and most laptops, you can buy today will handle Elements 14 and still photo editing. My $400 HP from staples with an average speed processor and 8 gig RAM handles still editing very well. It spends most of the time idle waiting for me to make a decision. The same machine does not do well with video, and I would want something more capable if that was my primary interest.

Just about anything you can buy today will run photo editing well enough. Mine is an out of the box HP with average processor speed and 8gig RAM, and I am slow, not my PC. Video, however, might need more juice.

Check your TV menu. You will probable find options for adjusting the image such as "standard", "movies", "games" etc., or even adjustments for saturation, hue, brightness and sharpness. Mine had one for "photos", and they look great.

I have had a ZS50 for 9 months, and I have found it to be an excellent camera. On Intellegent Auto it seemed to miss focus from time to time, but I set up center point focus on "P" and that helps a lot. Default noise filter is very strong, smoothing out a lot of detail, but I shoot RAW + Jpeg so I can apply the noise filter as needed, and this helps. Elements 12 does not support the ZS50, so I have to go through a converter, but such is life.

With mom and dad nowhere to be seen, this year's young eagle was out and about on his (her?) own. This is the first time I've seen him fly, but he (she?) had already manage to fly from from the nest to this dead pine.

I have two groups.

Group one is for photos of historical or sentimental value. I keep almost everything in this group.

Group two is for photos taken for fun. Here I am the "knockout" mode. Any new photo of a Florida lizard, for example, must be better than one in my existing "top-twenty", or out it goes. I mean, like how many photos of a little green lizard do I really need?

Just heard back from the PSE14 community and layers and masks as well as local adjustment brushes are not available in PSE14 RAW editing. It will be necessary to convert the RAW file to DNG or JPEG to use these features.

I almost always shoot both. At normal viewing, the RAW result is sometimes a little better than the JPEG. I often ask my wife which is better and she frequently sees no difference. (I already hear keys clicking writing to tell me I don't know editing. Don't waste your time. I don't pretend to be an expert) Which brings me back to my original point, RAW may or may not improve a decent JPEG file, but RAW certainly will not save a really bad image.

Ah, good to know. Next time I need a really good photo of a black wall I'll make sure to use RAW.