Picasa 3 and Photoshop Elements 7

The end of summer has come and gone. Daytime highs are now in the upper 70s and lower 80s. The 100s are past. Thank goodness. This photo was taken during the last of the humid season in early October, as the sun was starting to set.

I put this up here just to try out the new Picasa 3 Beta software. It works similarly to the older Picasa. I will have to dig and find out more of the differences. Apparently Picasa 3 has a viewer that we can use on the files we see in Windows Explorer. I will have to give that a try. Sounds nice.

Photoshop Elements 7 is out. I got my copy from Amazon.com: only $79 with another $20 rebate since I am upgrading from PE6. A pretty good bargin for Adobe software. Haven't used PE7 much. I hate their intro screenshot when you start the program. It is a blatent add for Photoshop.com, which is a hard sell to get you to pay a monthly fee to park your photos online with Adobe. Yes, there is a free service with very limited photo storage. Oh well, the program seems to work ok.

One of the new features I like about PE7 is the ability to change the old dark grey background with white lettering to get to a lighter background with black letters. I liked PE5, which had white background and black lettering on the menus. Then PE6 went to the photogrey background to have the color photos show up better. Well, the photos were nicer, but I teach Photoshop Elements and leading a class of people who can't hardly see the small white letters is tough. Even I have problems, and I know where the menu items are. So I welcome the change to allow the user to regain black lettering. I will have to see how it works in real life.