Toast and Photoshop Elements

[ime_NY]

~hi

so far the Switch has been great for me. The only things preventing me from putting up my Apple sticker on my car window is that I have not adapted to using iPhoto and have not been able to burn a data DVD successfully. So Toast Titanium and Photoshop Elements have caught my eye. Here I implore your help:

for those who have either program (or both), what do you use them for? In the case for Elements, what made you 100% sure that iPhoto would not cut it? for Toast, what is so great about the program that made you forgo using OS X's built-in features for data burning?

for me, one of the things I have not figured out yet is how to compress a JPEG the size of a few mb's to a few hundred kb's. Also, I'm in the market to use amateur editing effects: B+W, color filtering (i.e., B+ W photo of a garden, but filtering so that the red of roses would appear nicely). I've also read about the great interface of Elements --- can anyone provide their own feedback?

as for Toast, I'd use it for cataloging my important data as well as the burning some DVD's of the MPEG's i've recorded.

thanks in advance for your help!

[Dorian Gray]

I have Elements but it's version 2.0 (I bought it in 2003). I bought it to learn Photoshop, because it's the industry standard. If the current version of Elements has a great interface (and it may well have) Adobe must have redesigned it from the ground up, because Elements 2.0 takes the crown for worst user interface of any app on my computer! It's a total jungle of tiny toolbars, nested and illogical-named menus, idiosyncratic behaviour, etc. Really a mess. It's incredibly powerful (even version 2.0 three years later), but it takes a huge effort to become comfortable with it and maintain that familiarity. If Adobe did redesign it my comments will no longer hold of course.

For compressing JPEGs try using the Preview application that comes with OS X. Open the image in Preview (by double-clicking the image in the Finder or perhaps Control-clicking and selecting "Preview" from the "Open With" menu item), then do a "Save As...". Then select JPEG and a quality setting (adjusting this will adjust the compression level).

I also have Toast Titanium but I tend to burn discs with the Finder instead so haven't thoroughly explored what it can do. In contrast to Elements 2.0 it does have a nice user interface though. It seems a bit expensive for what it can do (I got it second-hand for next to nothing), but it certainly seems nicely put together.

[ime_NY]

Thanks, Dorian!

My photographic needs fall more on the "amateur" side of the spectrum, and I would like to invest in a program that's easy enough to use so that it encourages me to experiment more with photograpghy. I'll try your tips,; thank you very much!

[curiousuburb]

Elements does not support CMYK or other advanced colour models (LAB, etc), so you're never going to take its output to professional print or film or video, as compared to the full Photoshop, which has every conceivable format and option available.

Elements uses a simplified set of colour correction tools to do many basic tasks. The full PS has more knobs, dials, and fine control options for these and more tools.

On the upside, if you love filters and effects (usually true of those in the "amateur camp"), Elements has a much more useful gallery of these, all represented with thumbnails of their rough effect... PS has only text menu item listing.

There are some decent comparison charts on the web listing the full feature differences between Elements and PS (depending on version and platform)... for example (http://paws.flcc.edu/~adamsja/digital/software.html) (see near the bottom of the page)... search for similar ones if this list isn't appropriate.

As for Toast... similar answer... more knobs, dials, formats supported, options than plain Finder. Toast does VCDs that Finder doesn't... etc.

Ditto on the online comparison charts of feature differences.

YMMV.