What's the deal with Photoshop Elements 4?

[geomouchet]

I have Elements 2 and HPPE2. I'm considering upgrading to Elements 4 and don't see an HPPE version for it. Will HPPE3 work with Elements 4?

I read the reviews of Elements 4 on Amazon. Is it really that bad? The tool to select the background sounds really useful. I've found it very tedious to do in Elements 2 with the selection wand.

[MaryLynn]

I've had Elements 4 since the day it came out, upgrading from 2. I'm happy with it for the "shadow/highlights" adjustment feature and the healing brush. These may have been in PSE 3 but I skipped that version.

I also like the organizer and slideshow capabilities.

I'm not as impressed with the background selection tool but I haven't really tried to master it yet. So far it's working about as well as the magic wand. It is a variation of the selection tool in PSE 2 but I have now learned more about the selection tool and find it very useful.

Richard Lynch has assured us there will be HPPE 4 in a few weeks.

I hope this helps answer your questions.

MaryLynn

[DavidTHughes]

I use 3 and 4 because I use the curves element a lot. My problem with 4 is that is seem very slow and it appears to use an inordinate amount of memory. Is this anyone elses experience?

Thanks
David

[jbyers2]

Any word on the status of Hidden Power for Elements version 4?

- John

[Richard_Lynch]

Adobe has thrown another wrench in the works for Elements 4, and I've been working on making everything work again. I have just completed the writing, so the book should be out in a few months (February). I will have the tool set complete in the beginning of January...this time with over 100 tools (40 more than before)...and I'll be making that available from the web site as an upgrade/new release. These include work-arounds for Curves, Color Balance, Channel Mixer, Guides, CMYK separations, and all of the other things you may have heard elsewhere were removed from Elements.

I've re-written the book and done a lot of re-arranging to focus more specifically on image correction and adjustments, rather than some of the more esoteric materials (animation) and web concerns that were covered in the final chapters of previous versions. Conceptually, the whole seems to me to be even more cohesive than before. I've updated all examples that I retained and changed about 50% of them completely.

I hope for this release to build the Elements user community that has been all too elusive, centered on sharing progressive actions for Elements. If you have suggestions for what you'd like to see, please post them in the Elements 4 area: http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/a/

I'll be copying this post there too...