I’m a Photoshop CS user, and so I’m used to having more power than I know what to do with in my image-editing software. I love CS and couldn’t imagine doing my work without it. That said, there are some things about every professional edition of Photoshop that drive me crazy – like organization of menus and the number of palettes you have to have on screen to get anything useful done.

When Adobe started work on Elements, they clearly were creating Photoshop Lite, but what they ended up with was something that addresses some of the most common complaints of new Photoshop users. Almost every tool in Photoshop Elements makes sense in its placement and design.

To see the previous Elements article, click here.

For instance, instead of the rabbit warren which is the filters menu in CS, Elements uses a Filters palette that gives a visual representation of the effect that will be applied to your image. This is exactly the sort of interface that other, “consumer-grade” software packages have used for years, so it’s not something that sets Elements apart. It’s just a sign that Adobe listens.

Now for my favorite part: the How To palette. It’s like having an Adobe Classroom in a Book built right into your software. Want to know how to colorize a photo? Just follow the simple tutorial. Want to fix the contrast on your photos? It’s right there too. And while Photoshop has always had tutorials, Elements puts them right on the workspace so that you can’t miss them. Add to this a tooltip palette (it gives you information about the icon your mouse is hovering over) and you’ve got a great starting place for beginning photo editors.

If you have a copy of Elements, you know all of this stuff already. If you don’t have it – why not see if you can find a copy. I’ve seen older versions (I’m two versions behind right now) for less than $30. Not bad.

Next time I’ll give an overview of the Photoshop Elements websites that I’ve found that hopefully will be useful.