A great version of photoshop!

I have used photoshop for the past 5 years at work - although only for lightweight photo manipulation. Everything that I used to do, I can still to on this version.
I'm no graphic designer, and so I really wanted to make sure this version had the following, which is all I really did anyway:
1) Still has the select tool, and the ability to use layers
2) Still has the adjust - which has more user-friendly settings
3) Can still change image size, and"quality" of jpeg

Also, you can download a 30 day trial at the adobe site - which is useful too! On the whole, a relief to be able to do what I wanted to do, at around 10% of the price!

A must for all learner drivers

This dvd is the only official hazard perception test dvd on the market. Hazard Perception is a key part of today's driving tests and this high quality and interactive hazard perception DVD (formerly named the Roadsense dvd) will help boost your driving skills and prepare you for the tests and beyond. Essential for all learner drivers including lorry drivers, bus drivers and MOTORCYCLISTS, this official guide to hazard perception aims to improve the learner's perception of hazards and explains how todeal with them.

Yes, definetely a no-brainer!

I have not yet got my mits on Elements 6 but if it improves just one thing over Elements 4 then I shall be in the queue on the 14th.
If you have a digital camera I can only ask one thing... if you have not bought this program, why on earth not?
OK, it does lack the higher end funtionality of Photoshop CS such as layer masks but unless you have a contract with a fashion mag or make a living selling photos you won't even notice and what is there is utterly brilliant.
If I have a complaint it's that, since getting Elements 4, all I seem to have done is buy magazines to try out all the special effects and techniques it allows me to twiddle with so be warned - seriously addictive.
Whether you just 'point and click' or have a D-SLR and want to get a bit more creative you NEED this and like the previous reviewer, my advise is get it before someone realises what they could charge for it!

The best!

This dvd rom is the best out there, I bought mine 2 weeks before my theory test having never driven before & passed with 50/50 & 64/75 on the hazard perception section. One tip for the test is that on the hazard perception you can sometimes click on the developing hazard before the test begins to register it, therefore not giving you any points. I clicked 2 or three times slowly when I saw the developing hazard (too many too quickly can cause the test to think you are cheating).

Also I sold mine back on Amazon within 5 minutes of listing it making it an even better investment as it hardly costed me anything!

It IS the test syllabus. You have to have it.

This book is where the questions in the test come from. You may well pass the theory test without it - I tried the two on-line practice tests on the DSA site and got 33/35 both times [pass mark 30], before the book even arrived. Most questions are common sense to an experienced driver.

However, you'd be daft not to read up the book anyway. HGV drivers will have more techie stuff to answer than PCVers but all must know the new drivers' hours regs and that can only be mugged up, not guessed or worked out.

This is the one to buy

Photoshop is now the standard for post-processing of graphics - so there is no question about whether you want/need to buy this product. The ony question is which version to buy.

If you are a professional, and can afford it, the full version is naturally for you.

For us mere mortals who have to pay for things out of their pockets, there is the choice between version 6 (the latest one at the time of writing) and this version 5.

From what I can tell, the version 6 has a couple (and only a couple) of extra features in it compared to this version 5. If you want to check out what those features are and whether you really need then, then look at the Adobe website.

If you don't really need the extra gizmos, then this version is under £20, compared to several times that for the latest version.

My tip is that you buy this version 5 and save yourself the extra expense. There's more than enough in this version to keep all but the most stretched professional happy for a long time.

Great CD's but shame about the DVD

Step 1 - consign the DVD to the bin (it's tedious in the extreme). Then get on with revising for your driving test. Both the Hazard Perception and Theory test revision CDs are excellent. They follow the test closely and the questions are the actual ones that you will encounter so if you practice enough the likelihood that you will fail is very low. In particular the hazard perception test seems to catch people out. In practice it's clear that they aren't tryig to trick anyone. Running the videos quickly shows that the DSA is expecting you to spot rudimentary things such as cars braking, pedestrians walking in the middle of the road, cars reversing across the road, oncoming traffic, etc. Essentially all those things that would cause you to brake or stop. Having seen it I think that I wouldn't want anyone on the road who could not spot the things they are testing for. The theory test CD has a voiceover for anyone who has difficulty reading. All in all an excellent purchase.

No longer of any value

I’ve been using Microsoft Office on a professional, daily basis for twelve years (I earn my living by writing, so I"live" in Microsoft Word for extended periods during the day).

But recently I’ve stopped using Microsoft Office products altogether, for the simple reason that the latest release of OpenOffice is now every bit as good. It uses open-standard file formats, can read/write Microsoft Office file formats, and is built by a reputable company (Sun Microsystems). It can even write Adobe PDF documents - which is very useful. Most remarkably of all, it costs absolutely nothing! It is a completely free download off the Internet from it’s own official web site. It’s not even a"trial" version - you get the whole thing for free, to keep.

So take a long look at OpenOffice before you spend any money on Microsoft’s offering. You’d be mad not to.

Good choice for advanced home user

While good to get you going, the photo and video packages often bundled with PCs etc really don't give you anything advanced and easy to use (I mean the budget editions that usually cost about £25 to buy separately).

So after deciding that I no way need the mega-functionality of professional packages (even if I could afford splashing out several hundred pounds on one!) I looked into reviews from a number of different sources on a couple of mid-range packages but the only way to really know is to try one out first before buying.

Adobe have a try-before-buy scheme for stuff like this on their website (the Pro versions and the Elements versions of PhotoShop and Premier are available) although the file downloads are naturally very big. It was after trying these that made me buy the Elements bundle.

I spent pretty much a whole weekend with the trial version (which is fully featured with a 30day timeout) editing holiday photos and video clips trying out various features - it's really quite intuitive to use and (so far) I haven't had any of the crashes that others have experienced so for me it gets a thumbs up.

Surprisingly, ordering from Amazon was a couple of pounds cheaper than buying the unlock codes direct from Adobe and also gets you the installation DVD and manuals. Note though that you have to uninstall the downloaded time-limited version and then reinstall from the disk as the licence codes with the disk won't unlock the downloaded time-limited version.

More Than Pleasantly Surprised

Having used Creatacard Platinum 7 for a number of years and having had to invest in a new PC I thought GCF 6 would be the next logical step. What a revelation, absolutely brilliant!! No printing problems, ( read the install instructions!! ) V.7 supplied AND Vista compatible. Oh, and last but not least - a hard copy manual - a welcome rarity in this day and age.
Brilliant.

A Worthy Upgrade to an Essential Photo Application

I recently upgraded from the original Aperture (Ver. 1.2) to this new version (Ver. 2.1), and I am very happy with it.

Image editing enhancements aside (there's many a tutorial and explanation on the Apple website), the major criticism I found with Aperture 1 was that it was a massive memory hog, mostly due to the program being designed for Power-PC architecture. This meant that when editing photos or loading up the program on my Intel-Macbook, the software was very 'heavy' and laggy at times.

This version is now configured to work with Intel-chipsets in the current Macintosh lineup and as such operates far more smoothly and requires much less memory to run. It has also been 'polished' to be consistent with the aesthetic changes in OSX Leopard.

Aperture is far superior to Apple's iPhoto, and also can export files to be edited in external programs, such as Photoshop. For organising a large photo library and all the non-destructive image-editing that goes with it (files remain in tact, only the changes are saved and applied when viewing and exporting the images, saving on crucial hard-drive space) this program is essential, if not amazingly beneficial to professionals and amateur photographers alike. A long overdue upgrade to an amazingly useful program.

Good beyond what I thought it would be

OK, a few months ago I tested this program and only because of the rigidity of the UI I thought it was a not to my liking. At the same time I tested Apple's Aperture that has a much more flexible UI and worked better for me, so I bought that one and was happy with it. Recently I even bought the upgrade to Aperture 2.

For some reason that I can't remember I decided to try out Lightroom again just to remember me why I didn't like it. I was in a bit of disbelief on this product and not really thinking of changing from Aperture. I just wanted to satisfy my curiosity. I downloaded the trial version, installed on my machine, exported some masters from Aperture and imported in it. That's when I was blown away.

Among the files that I exported there were some RAW pictures of my black car shot at ISO800 with a Canon EOS 40D. In Aperture the black car has quite a lot of noise and I was upset with it, but I thought it was a deficiency of the camera and would never suspect of Aperture's RAW processing capabilities. When I imported the same pictures in Lightroom the quality of the output image was FAR (REALLY FAR) superior. I so much couldn't believe myself that I exported one of the images in full-res JPEG in both Aperture and Lightroom and compared them in Photoshop just to make sure that I wasn't being tricked and there it was, the resulting picture exported from Lightroom had better colour saturation, less noise and still had the same great sharpness of the picture exported by Aperture.

I can't explain that, but it alone was more than enough to prompt me to buy a Lightroom book and try it out for real. Then I found other niceties like the adjustment of exposure levels by full and 1/3 stops, the better histogram that Adobe knows how to do so well, the performance that is blazing fast after Aperture (even version 2), the advanced tools and much more.

I still don't like to be switching between Library and Develop modes to make my image adjustments and still prefer the flexibility of Aperture on that area, but if having more flexibility means I get lower image quality and less sophisticated tools I can live with the more rigid workflow in Lightroom.

Whoever reads my review on Aperture written not long after I first bought it will see that I gave it 5 stars, so if I could I would give Lightroom 6 or more. It is just that much better. I just feel sorry that I can't get a refund for my Aperture 1 and 2 licenses... :)

This is the greatest software on earth.

The software loaded with no problem, and I was using it to do simple editing right away. Photoshop Elements 4.0 is fantastic. My O.K. looking digital photograghs look anywhere from much better to amazing with this software. There is a learning curve if you're not familiar with digital editing. Adobe's website offers inexpensive 21 day courses that really helped me. Also, I made use of Adobe's free help center on the web to learn the software features.

This is the software that can do everything I wanted other inferior picture software to do. Again, there is a learning curve, but I didn't think it was difficult to understand or use Photoshop Elements 4.

For a little time spent learning, I got a big, big bang for my buck.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 - Wonderful

Photoshop CS3 is wonderful and a real joy to use. We were not naive enough to feel it could run on an older less powerful machine. We purchased a new PC especially to run Photoshop CS3, with a lot of memory and running XP Professional, and have hardly anything else running on this machine so that other software does not clutter things up etc.

CS3 loaded very easily. After installing the upgrades - 260MB - we started to use it for our day to day image processing. You download your images directly from your card into Bridge and then open them as RAW files. Camera RAW 4.1 is amazing and you will find your images benefit greatly from using this software. After this processing in Photoshop CS3 is smooth and very reliable.

We have now been using this software for a while and have had absolutely no problems at all. Photoshop CS3 is dream imaging software.

Seen it before

There is no denying that MS Publisher is one of the greatest programs ever written, and an essential component of any office package. I have been privaleged to beta test office 2007 including publisher for the last 6 months, and I am sad to say that although word, excel, and powerpoint have been radically redesigned, other than the fact it is now a garish blue, pubisher remains identical to the version Microsoft released in 2000. There is no flashy new ribbon or any attempt to integrate publisher into the vista backdrop. Instead it resolutly maintains the old menu interface, along with a distinctly windows 98 feel.

As I said before, this is a decent enough program, but it does no more than all the older versions did, without any of the new eye-candy we have come to expect from vista-era Microsoft.

Jasc Paint shop pro 8

This is an excellent product, it has a learning centre to help you through various tasks, the red eye removal feature is very easy to use, you can also do the one step photo fix, which gives your photo's, picture's, projects a new lease of life, personally i don't think you need any experience with this, its all part of the learning process, I would however advise you that, if you are buying this product download a trial from jasc, and if you like come back here and buy, its much cheaper and easier than direct from jasc. I have had this product about 2 weeks now, and i have managed to make simple gif banners for my site, and auctions at Ebid, I have redesigned a picture of my daughter, in sepia, framed it, and split the photo. Also took a picture of the kids nativity, came out a bit worse for wear, although jasc solved that, finally you can make a banner, save it as a gif, then take it into another program, ie: selteco web animator and convert it into a .swf :)

About to be replaced

A great product, but a few weeks after I bought it Corel announced a new version. Hang on and wait to see if that would make a better upgrade choice.

doesn't export to web formats well

Try making a button for a web page and exporting it using Coreldraw X3. It's a very frustrating process. The background that should be transparent isn't and neither is the circle shape of the button round. Useless. Does other things well enough but certainly has serious flaws with regard to web graphics. I wonder if I could have bought something better.
Also the Corel website does not allow an open forum for purchasers. Draw your own conclusioms.