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Hello all,

This is a question to all web designers out there. For the purpose of web design, is Photoshop Elements sufficient?

Adobe’s website (Photoshop CS4) and even a few Google searches didn’t hold a satisfactory answer.

All features listed on Adobe’s Photoshop CS4 product page don’t sound immensely convincing to me.

What do you think?

I do not speak as a professional designer, but:

There are 30-day free trials available for both, so you could try them for your tasks and see whether one is sufficient. The fixed dark-grey/light-grey UI of Elements you may find annoying.

Many of the extras that full Photoshop provides are for sophisticated photo retouching and print-ready editing (CMYK support). If you are exchanging files with other designers nothing but full Photoshop may suffice (though other programs can read and write PSD files). If you want to use certain plugins that may also be true. (Adobe keeps crippling the kinds of plugins Elements can use. I am not sure what the latest situation is.)

You may find free programs such as paint.net (http://getpaint.net) or The GIMP quite sufficient for your needs now.

Thanks Dan, I was hoping someone had used both and perhaps had a very compelling reason for upgrading. Thanks for pointing out the 30-day trial. Totally overlooked that one. 😊

Elements is MORE than fine for most of the stuff that web designers do….....

I stopped buying the real one many years ago and have never missed it.

That’s my opinion…....

There are many purposes to be used Photoshop for. Of cause, Adobe’s Photoshop CS4 features are very useful for those who are interested in them, as in other way, they wouldn’t be created at all. However, for web designers, elements are sufficient, but not exhaustive.