Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 plus Premier Elements 3.0
© 2007 Adobe Systems Incorporated
If you know an older child that is interested in creating with digital pictures or video, you need to know about Adobe's answer to iMove and iPhoto. Designed only for Windows, this combination pack contains two powerful but complex products for photo and video editing. They are a logical bundle, because it is common to use still photos in your video productions. New features of Photoshop Elements 5.0 include the ability to convert color originals to black and whites; make customized photo creations using themed layout options for albums, postcards, scrapbook pages, and more; as well as string together a series of still photos in a flipbook that creates a sense of motion. Images can be saved in JPG, TIF, PDS, PDF, BMP and GIF formats. If you want to prepare professional EPS images in CMYK format, you're out of luck with Elements, and will need to purchase a full version of Photoshop instead. New features of Premier Elements 3.0 include the ability to edit and view your movie in a single location — the Monitor window — where you can drag one scene onto another to create picture-in-picture effects, trim and split clips and type text onscreen. Other new features of this package include the ability to capture a single video frame, add text, graphics, or other enhancements and then put it back in your movie for a freeze frame effect. According to the company's press materials, the process for transferring video straight to DVD has been simplified. We have yet to test all of these features. A fairly complete users guide is included in the box; one for each program.
$130, Windows XP
Teaches: art, creativity, digital photography and video editing