Buying Photoshop, which version?

[davidblaine]

Hi, I'm interested in buying my first version of photoshop.
I can in no way afford $600+ for cs3. I've seen offers to sell elements 5 for under $50 tho.

My main interest is making my digital photos look like watercolors, oil paintings or woodblock prints.

Will Elements 5 work for me? Is there a favorite book that you could recomend for me to learn how to use Photoshop, particularly these techniques?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[MindBender]

Adobe offers 30 day trials of it's software... if you are on a fast connection or have access to one, that would be a good way to compare their programs.

I haven't worked with Elements 5 but I know that the main focus of Elements is to simply improve the look of photos... not make creative changes to them per se. That's not to say that you can't, it just won't be as powerful, and you won't find as m any tutorials on the subject.

There maybe some other options for you. I know people that are perfectly happy using PaintShopPro... which is a much cheaper program ($99).

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1184951547051

If you're wanting to play with it... GIMP is a free application that has many of the features of Photoshop.
mac: http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
wind: http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/

 

[ronmatt]

As Mindbender said, PS Elements is a very nice little editor, it has nowhere near the depth of most any recent, full versions of Photoshop. I doubt you'd be all that happy with Gimp for work on photos. But you might, and it is free. PSP is far less expensive than Photoshop and many people swear by it, check out some Paint Shop Pro forums such as this one;

http://www.talkgraphics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=29

If you still want 'full on' photoshop, try to get PS7. Although I have the full CS3 Designer suite, I still have PS7 installed because I still favor 7 over any version.

Some philosophy; Some people can create wonders with sticks and rocks where as some others can't create anything with a world of materials at their disposal.