The culprit was sitting innocently on a bench in the background, but in the picture it looks like my girlfriend is on his lap. My problem is familiar to any amateur photographer, and with the advent of digital cameras and cheap desktop scanners, many more of us now consider tinkering with fluffed shots on our PCs. Many digital cameras come with software for cropping and rotating snaps. One answer is a professional image-editing program like Adobe's Photoshop, favored by most graphic designers and used in the production of this magazine. Now, however, Adobe has released Photoshop Elements, a detuned version of the program aimed squarely at amateurs.
Elements does an excellent job of holding the user's hand.
One of its most useful features is a floating window called the Hints palette. Roll your cursor over any tool and the palette tells you what it's for. There's no intrusion, no annoying cartoon assistant, but wherever you turn, context-sensitive help is only a click away. Once you get the hang of the basics, Elements offers plenty of more advanced features. Under the hood purrs Photoshop's engine, so Elements can do most things its big brother can.