Shel - I bought Elements 3 to get the updated version of Photoshop Album. I don't use the Elements part of it much these days.
Here's a link to a screen shot of the single PE3 raw converter screen and five shots showing the CS2 raw converter with each of it's five tabs selected. <http://georges.smugmug.com/share/2V6vqLGEfHEKc> (These screen captures aren't available from the menus on my website. So save this link if you want to come back to it later. I believe I'm working within the fair use provisions of copyright because we're using these screens as an illustration for discussing the programs, but there's no reason to link them to the menus of my web site.) You can see that there are a lot of things in CS2 that don't show up in PE3. I believe the PE3 version has as much or maybe slightly more functionality than was found in the older CS version. >From what I've read, both use the same core conversion engine. CS2 adds a more functionality and "fine tuning". My guess is a darkroom guy like yourself would prefer the CS2 version if only to get the "curves" tab. When you're adjusting the tonal range of an image, you do the coarse adjustments with the sliders on the "adjust" tab, then do your fine tuning with the "curves" tab. The sliders and curves in the raw converter do their work on the pre-conversion linear data. The curves operation in Photoshop does its work on the post conversion data. I'm not sure if that's clear, but that's why they asked Bruce Fraser to write the book on Camera Raw instead of me. At any rate, Elements 3 doesn't have a curves function in either the raw converter or in Elements itself. There are add ons that give you the functionality of curves in Elements (Most notably those included with Richard Lynch's book "The Hidden Power of Photoshop Elements 3"). They have some drawbacks. Slightly switching topics, I agree with Paul's statement that the istD seems to do a good job of not blowing out the highlights. Combine that natural tendency with Camera Raw's highlight recovery algorithms and I think you could say that you get a stop or two more headroom than you might have expected. Although, I'm not sure it's that much. There's a short section in Fraser's Camera Raw book explaining how the program attempts to recreate highlight detail in a blown channel from any remaining data in other channels. Just to add another log to the fire, I've recently started working my way through the new book by Dan Margulis, "Photoshop LAB color". This book is introducing me to some really powerful stuff for adjusting color that I didn't know I didn't know. (If you know what I mean.) Once you start reading that book, you'd probably not be happy with Elements. There's no LAB color in there. You need to get to a full Photoshop version. Well, I've rambled on enough for one message. See you later, gs <http://www.georgesphotos.net> On 9/9/05, Shel Belinkoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > George, > > Thanks for posting that. Once I start working more with RAW, it may be > worthwhile to take CS2 for a rest ride. > > I heard that the converter in Elements 3.0 is the same. Do you know if > that's correct? > > Shel > >
