I'm curious to know if anyone has tried out version 4 of PS Elements. I started with 2, upgraded to 3. I'd like to know if the "bang" is worth the "buck" required to upgrade (likely just buy a new one at Wal-Mart, it's about as cheap as any I've found, though I can qualify for educator's discount at Academic Superstore).

I really cannot answer your question, however I have read something from NAPP about that question and their theory is this:

When software upgrades 1 step, it adds new features. When it upgrades again it adds more and sometimes changes some of the last set of new features. So if you miss an upgrade and then do the next one, then you have to learn both sets of upgrades at the same time.

So I would think that one thing to take into consideration is the number of changes that are being made. Along with just what changes and or new features are added that you cannot just live without!

And of course if you are in business, is your compitition upgrading and doing things that you cannot?

No easy answer for the question, I think you have to base the decession on your circumstances.

Mike

I'm curious to know if anyone has tried out version 4 of PS Elements. I started with 2, upgraded to 3. I'd like to know if the "bang" is worth the "buck" required to upgrade (likely just buy a new one at Wal-Mart, it's about as cheap as any I've found, though I can qualify for educator's discount at Academic Superstore).

I've purchased PSE4, Rod, but find myself drifting to PSP more often than not. For the money I find that PSP is far more feature-rich and flexible, with somewhat better customer support: "somewhat" in that when owned by JASC this support was better than offered by its current ownership. And trying to gain a response from Adobe is again proving as fruitless for me as it was when I long ago purchased my first version of Illustrator.

One of the first things I discovered is that PSE4 does not allow me access to all of the plug-ins in my collection. I refer to plug-ins compatible to this application and to my OS. What I have found is that I must move to a temporary folder plug-ins that I may be less likely to use in order to allow others to be installed at application start-up.

Among the graphics applications with which I am familiar and use is PSE2; I did not purchase PSE3 on its release.