1. The PSE5 "upgrade" TOOK AWAY the ability to create beautiful Calendar Pages on one's own printer. (I've been told
told there is a way to move this feature out of PSE4 into PSE5, but that idea disturbs me.)
2. PSE6 changed the way PSE finds the catalog; specifically, it now looks for the catalog on a specific drive serial
number rather than a drive letter--so, whereas recovering one's catalog with PSE4 involves merely changing the drive letter of
one's backup of a crashed drive to the drive letter on that crashed drive, beginning with PSE 6 one is forced to use Adobe's
EXTREMELY CUMBERSOME File>Backup menu to perform backups and restores of one's catalog, which may contain tens
of thousands of music, photos and videos.
3. PSE7, beyond comprehension, LIMITS the length of slide show transitions to a maximum of 5 seconds. Imagine, if you,
will, having the ability to make a Barn Door transition take, say, 30 or more full seconds to open and reveal, say, the
majestic vista that lies behind. That is a magnificent site to behold. I write "imagine" because, with PSE7, that's all one
can do is imagine it. What were they thinking when they decided to alter one of the very most important features of Photoshop Elements?
Yes, it's true, one can send one's slide show to Pre7 where the length of the transitions can be stretched, HOWEVER,
the immediate result is that the exquisite timing of one's slides to one's music that can be achieved with previous editions
of PSE is thereby LOST. Grrr!
Here are my 2 sole uses for PSE7:
1) creating DVD jackets for my DVD slide shows and movies
2) using its Organizer for the occasional still that I intend to edit in PSE7 then include in a SD or HD video that I am creating with Pre7 (which, by the way, is
a MAGNIFICENT program--thank you very much, Steve, for writing "the missing manual" that makes this program so very capable).
BTW, there IS an upside to the fact that PSE4 is still the best for slide shows and Pre7 now the best for videos: It's now more logical than ever to use two different Organizers
for one's stills and one's clips. Even better, put PSE4 on one computer and Pre7 on another--then limit the exposure of each of them to the internet as much as you possibly can. (I've
been extra-nervous about internet exposure ever since Steve wrote that even a Windows Update can cause some of one's existing software to stop working.)
