Photoshop Elements vs Photoshop

snflwrgrl78

Ok for those of you out there that have created invites using Photoshop, can I  do  something similar with Photoshop Elements 8?

I have never used either program but the investment into Elements is more in our price range than the full Photoshop program.

Thanks for any advice....

squirrly

I've not used Elements, but I think you should be fine.

There are a few free options, though.  You should be able to get a trial Photoshop liscense for 30 days for free at their website (http://www.adobe.com).  As long as you've got things together, you should be able to make that work.  I think Gimp is pretty popular, and I found a list of 10 totally free web aps that do photoshop-y stuff.

http://www.lifeclever.com/10-free-web-based-alternatives-to-photoshop/

Also, photoshop isn't required.  I did our invite design in MS Publisher.  I like photoshop for editing images, but it's not so great with text and layouts against a page.  Publisher is good for that. 

jennylove810

I do graphic design on the side, and unless you have a significant amount of experience with the Photoshop program, I would HIGHLY recommend that you do like squirrly and use Publisher.  Publisher, while a pretty powerful and nifty program, is much more normal-person friendly.  Photoshop is a start-from-scratch deal with so many options you could end up seriously confusing and frustrating yourself.

Not that I don't have faith in your skills, it's just that I'm pretty good with Photoshop and I've wanted to throw the freakin computer out the window on multiple occasions.

katiediane2010

If you are gung ho on going with Photoshop or a similar program, you can try Gimp, which can be freely downloaded off the internet and has most of the same functions as photoshop. 

It is, however, an adventure of its own as it is a definitely less user friendly than Adobe's Photoshop. I found myself on google constantly looking up functions in gimp to find out how to do them. Once you figure it out how to do what you want to do though, you're basically using a free version of photoshop .