Photographers these days have it much easier with digital cameras, you can take hundreds of photographs and view them instantly on your camera/ computer. You no longer need choose the correct camera film and no need to learn advanced dark room techniques to correct and enhance photographs. Most professional and amateur photographers now use software to fix or manipulate photographs they have taken.

This article will look the two most widely used pieces of software for photo editing; Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Adobe Photoshop Elements. I will outline the main differences to help you decide which product is best suited to you.

Price

Obviously price is a major factor when buying anything and the price difference between Photoshop and Elements is massive. Below is the lowest prices I could find for both software:

Adobe Photoshop CS5: £605
(Price from Amazon, Feb 2012) – View product on Amazon

Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 £34.99
(Price from Amazon, Feb 2012) – View product on Amazon

So what justifies this difference in price? The difference is mainly because of the extra features in Photoshop CS5.

Features

Adobe Photoshop Elements is basically a scaled down version of the full version of Photoshop with ‘elements’ of the full Photoshop Software. Below is a list of some of the main functions that are included in Photoshop CS5 and not Photoshop Elements. Even though I have been a Photoshop user for 5+ years I personally don’t use most of these functions and could easily get away with using Elements.

• Puppet Warp
• Pen Tool (vector drawing & selections)
• Content-Aware Fill
• 64-bit support (for performance)
• HDR Pro
• Paths Palette
• Vanishing Point Tool
• History Brush
• Curves
• Full 16-bit RGB
• Creating custom Actions (scripting)
• Smart Objects, Smart Guides
• Color Balance and Match Color
• Channels Palette and Mixer
• Automatic lens correction
• Warp Transform Tool
• 3D objects & text
• Pixel Bender plug-in
• CMYK and Lab color models
• Truer Edge detection technology
• Adjustments & controls for everything

You would really need to be quite advanced in Photoshop to be using some of these functions but generally Photoshop Elements contains all of the main tools a photographer needs to start editing and enhancing photographs.

Ease of Use

Photoshop CS5 is geared towards professional image users, and is thus more difficult to use. Elements has a more intuitive, more user-friendly interface.

However, if you’re already familiar with photo editing software, such as earlier versions of Photoshop, then this won’t be much of an issue.

Conclusion

I think that Photoshop CS5 is worth the money of you are going to use all of the tools and functions it has to offer but for most photographers Adobe Photoshop Elements is sufficient. For the general photographer I think Elements is the clear winner and isn’t going to break the bank!