The one star part: Adobe are at it again. For those who have Elements 7 or 8 the upgrade features in version 9 are so sparse as to make any right minded person baulk at paying what is a shocking amount of money for the additional features provided. It seems that when it comes to Photoshop Elements, Adobe have run out of steam. I’ve got version 8 and loaded up the trial version of 9 – several days later I was still looking for the difference.

The 5 star part: perhaps it is because Elements is such a good photo editor that Adobe don’t need to do too much to it. The product remains pretty much the same release after release, and that’s testament to the fine product it is.

If you’ve got Photoshop Elements 7 or 8, then stick with what you have (unless you have a bunch of $’s burning a hole in your pocket, that is). If you haven’t tried Photoshop Elements, then it is a superb editor, and nothing out there short of the full Photoshop, can touch it. If Elements is what you desire, then sure go for version 9, but version 8 can be picked up for a whole lot less money, and is just as good.

Oh, the Organizer, is the most awkward, convoluted means of organizing anything yet devised. Ignore that and you’ll get on great.

Elements 8 & 9 are advertised by adobe Windows and Mac compatible but you had better have a Mac Intel version

or it won’t work. The Box says Universal WINDOWS & MAC BUT IT REALLY ISN’T AND THEY WON’T MAKE ADJUSTMENTS.

ITS NOT THE PRODUCT ITS THE COMPANY… BEWARE

This is indeed an extraordinary application. The improved Spot Healing Brush, and specifically the sublime Content Aware option, justify the price with plenty to spare.

BUT once upon the time there were printed manuals. Then they were on the CD and you had to print them. Now we are offered a twenty-meg 367 page pdf file to download and – if we can – print. This is preposterous, hence four stars not five. I have Barbara Brundage’s Missing Manual on order!

Incidentally does the boy on the box look like the President as a child or is that my imagination?

Interesting too that it has been released here (England) but not, I gather, in the USA. Generally the other way round.

I upgraded from Photoshop Elements (PSE) 6 for Windows to PSE9 for Mac and was glad to see that the Mac and Windows versions were essentially the same. Since I use iPhoto for organizing, I can’t say anything about PSE’s Organizer, but I gave the Editor a workout.

Elements is at the high end of what I’ll spend for a photo editor, and I buy roughly every third version to keep the price reasonable over the years, so it’s time, and I’m happy to say that 9.0 fits my needs . . . and then some.

Like PSE6, PSE9 it is a great overall photo editor. It does a good job of enhancing photos, either with a click of a button or just a few clicks if I happen to disagree with the Auto Smart Fix. It can process batches of photos that all need the same work done to them. And it has enough manual controls (histograms, contrast, brightness, shadows/highlights, red eye, color correction, layers, etc.) to do just about anything to a photo you can imagine.

Pros:

* It works smoothly with iPhoto; I could switch back and forth easily and quickly and open multiple photos at once for editing.

* It’s fast on my MacBook Pro.

* The editor hasn’t crashed yet, and I’m running through thousands of photos.

* All of the features that I’m familiar with from previous versions still work well, and some, like the magic lasso, work even better than before.

* Content-aware healing can perform minor miracles in my hands. In the hands of an expert, or someone with more patience, it can probably perform major miracles.

* The Guided Edits helped me visualize the steps involved for some of the more complicated features, which helped me make better use of the Full Edit.

* PhotoMerge Group Shot is incredibly easy to use. I had two photos shot at different distances, and PSE had no trouble making the necessary adjustments.

* Removing clutter from photographs is simple.

* Oh happy day, Elements now has layer masks, a feature that used to be the domain of its pricier sibling. Now you can make parts of a layer more or less opaque, allowing for some really neat effects. I won’t use this often, but a few of my photos are just crying out for it.

Cons:

* The Welcome Screen is still annoying. Fortunately, you can set it up to go straight to the Organizer or Editor.

* It still can’t batch process the Save for Web feature. Sigh.

* My camera has a panorama assistant but doesn’t stitch them together, so I was interested in PSE9′s enhanced panorama stitching. For the most part, it’s very easy. PSE does most of the work. Unfortunately, it created an enormous file–117mg–out of my five 5mg photos and ran out of RAM before it could finish everything–even after I maxed out the RAM in Preferences. I ended up with a very nice panorama but had to reduce the file size before doing some of the final touches myself. Then the final jpeg size turned out to be smaller than any of the individual photos.

* Yeah, I would have liked a manual.

If you are currently using PSE 8, there may not be enough new features to warrant an upgrade yet, though the content-aware healing might make it worth it. From version 6? Definitely.

If you have never used Elements, this is a great application with a bit of a learning curve. Get the free one-month trial, and borrow a book on it from the library. That’s where I’ll be headed once the manuals for version 9 show up.

About six months ago I converted from PC to Mac. Once I had the Mac, I had to then get some word processing software. The rep helping me recommended Iwork because it was similar to MS Office, significantly cheaper, and I could open Word documents. Having owned Iwork for almost the entire six months I can say that it’s okay but it’s just too different and basic. Too many extra steps required and to hard to re-learn how to do all the stuff I do in Word. Not to mention that when you save a file in word format it’s usually distorted when you open it on a PC using word.

Then I finally decided to give MS Office 08 for Mac a shot. It’s like music went off when I first booted up Word. Now when I open Word files I’m opening them exactly as they would appear on a PC using Office. I have access to all the familiar commands without having to go searching for them. I’ve only had the software for a week but already I’ve noticed a huge difference in my comfort and confidence when writing something.

Trust me, if you’re a convert to Mac and you’re not familiar with Iwork programs but have used Office for a substantial amount of time, I say spend the extra money and get MS Office for Mac.

I recently purchased this product for my new mac book pro and I must say it’s been great so far. I’ve primarily been using word (class assignments) and entourage (scheduling in & out of school), which both have been impressive. This product provides you with as just as many, if not more options for whatever application you choose to use. Before buying Office 2008 for Mac, I did my research and read a lot of bad reviews, many people saying it was causing their computers to freeze or crash. I ended up going against the majority and was glad I did because I have yet to experience any problems with it. The software fits well with a mac and provides you with all the means necessary for transferring your documents over to a pc. I would highly recommend this product to anyone who is either on the fence about buying it or if they’re looking for software to help stay compatible with the pc world.

I have been in the military for the past 17+ years used Microsoft products on a PC since Windows 3.1 was the newest software. I recently upgraded to a Macbook Pro and was looking for a way to view work and personal files (Word Docs, Excel Spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides) on my Mac. This product does all that and more! I simply love it, including the easy to set-up and use Entourage (which mimics MS Outlook). Now I can simply open Entourage and get my web-mail, keep my contacts and calendar all synched in one place. I am a total Mac convert and this was the key piece in my conversion. Also, there are three serial numbers with this product so you can load it on up to three different machines, which I already did for my Wife’s Macbook Air. Amazing, 5 stars!

Past versions of Office installed the old fashioned Mac way, you dragged the program to your hard drive and presto, you were installed. Not so anymore. Now, like everything else in the Mac universe (the Vista universe as well) Microsoft has installed an installer program, which not only installs, but uninstalls your older version of Office. Not a big deal as far as I’m concerned, but if you use Visual Basic, you’re going to be upset, because there is no VBA in this version, but I hear it’s coming later.

As for the applications in Office, Word is the one I use most and almost exclusively, but if you’re like me, I’d recommend Office instead of Word as a standalone, as it’s not that much more and you never know when you’re going to need to use Excel. Hey, now you can balance you checkbook with it with easy as all get out (wasn’t so easy before), so you just might find you’ll use it more than you’d think.

Back to Word, I use it all day, everyday, and I wouldn’t say I’m in love with it, because to me it means work and who likes work? Not me, I’d rather be away from my computer any day, but I’ve go this bad habit I need to support, I like to eat and Word just plain simply makes it easier for me to get my work done. I’ve tried other word processors, from the nice Mellel to Apple’s Pages, but I always come back to Word. I suppose because I know and understand it. Better the devil you know. However, Word is no longer a devil. It’s pretty intuitive now. I know, shocker of shocker, hard to believe, but Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit have really cooked up a winner here. I think so anyway.

If you were a Word 2004 user you might miss all those toolbars, I don’t miss `em in the least, but if you do, you can get them back. You can make 2008 look just like 2004 if you want, but who’d want to. I like the new palettes and heck I’ve long ago learned all the menu commands, so who needs a toolbar or palette anyway?

All that said, I’m not all that pleased with the new docx which is Words new default way to save your work. I changed it back to doc in preferences. I don’t know why Microsoft did this, but I’m betting they have a secret reason that’s going to be revealed at a later day that will blow everybody away, but until then I’ll be saving in doc format so that all my work is compatible.

Entourage is another program I never use, but I played around with it and I like the My Day floating app. It’s now my exclusive calendar program and though I never used to make to do lists, I do now. I could go on raving about this version of Word, I really, really like it, but I think you’ve probably figured that out by now. In conclusion this is a fine edition of a fine product which is now more Mac like than ever. Check it out, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Microsoft Office for the Mac 2008 contains Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Entourage and is a must have program. I was using Claris Works (how old is that) on my PowerBook, but I’m getting ready to think about upgrading to a MacBook and Claris Works won’t work on the newer machines.

Word is very intuitive and easy to use. I’ve written several letters in Word and have found it to be fast, though not as fast as that old (and I guess bare bones) software I’d been using. I do use Office for Windows on a Dell, so I really didn’t have any problems at all with the Mac Version. The interface for the two programs is a bit different and I like the Mac version better, probably because I’m a Mac person at heart.

The Windows version of Office arranges the functions with tabs, however the Mac version puts the functions in drop down windows, but the templates and Smart Art Graphics are the same for both versions and that’s convenient and I really like the My Day widget for Entourage that floats on top of the desktop. Having all my to do lists right there, that’s convenient too. I really feel like I’ve taken a step into the new Millennium with this program.

I don’t understand, the people at CNET can say Office for the Mac 2008 doesn’t have all the features that Office for Windows 2007 has. I don’t agree. I use the Windows version at home and have the Mac version on three different computers. One at work now and a desktop (iMac) and a laptop (PowerBook G4) and to me the Mac version is every bit as robust and feature rich as the Windows version. I don’t then Microsoft skimped a bit here, in fact I think they went all out.

In my opinion this is the best productivity software you can buy for the Mac, bar none. Sure, I suppose there are less costly ways to go to get a lot of the features here, but hey, you bought a Mac, so you’ve already paid a bit more than you’d pay for a Dell or an HP machine. I know, money is tight for a lot of people these days, but if you use your computer to earn a living, then this is a program that’ll pay for itself. If you don’t have Office on your Mac, you need it.

However, do you need it if you have the 2004 version. Maybe not. Seriously, the 2004 version does everything I want it to do and though it’s not running natively on my Intel iMac, I’d swear you’d never know. The new (2008) version seems a little snappier, but not so much that I’d spring for the upgrade. Also the interface is gorgeous, much better than the 2004 version, but still, probably not worth the price of an upgrade.

I guess that’s Microsoft’s curse, they made the last version so doggone good, that you hate to leave it and leave it I did, because when you install the 2008 version it removes the earlier version. That kind of ticked me off at first, but I don’t really need it anymore as the never version is better. But, like I said, if you have the older version, you’ll have to check the state of your wallet, before upgrading.