Alaskan Apple Users Group Blog

Make no mistake, Philip Andrews’ Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 For Photographers is a book for photographers. The book has a short digital photography basics section at the beginning, but it is by-and-large written for people who already have a good grasp on photography. There’s no explanation of shutter-speed, f-stop, and ISO. This isn’t one of the “_____ For Dummies” books, it’s a book for people who already know a thing or two. This is purely about Adobe Elements 8.

Things didn’t get off to a great start – downloading the program was quite frustrating. As a reviewer I was given a license code to use so I could access the paid version that usually costs $29.95 but it was not at all clear to me how to accomplish this. So I tried two things – I started the Buying process to see if there would be a place for my code as I went along and I tried contacting tech support by email – neither plan worked and the only replies I got from the company were the auto-reply that they had received my email to tech support, and 2 messages asking why I had not followed through on my purchase. A fellow club member figured it out for me (when you install the free version there is an “Upgrade Now” option and I was finally able to input my code).

In trying to find a baseline approach to this review I have a number of hurdles to leap in order to bring people up to speed a both a computer game and what I have found out is quite literally an entire virtual universe. Before getting into the game there are a couple of terms that should be noted to any player who wants to speak the lingo. In gaming there are a variety of types of games, some include FPS or First Person Shooters; Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog are called Platformers; but all these games involve playing in a set environment and story.