After picking up PhotoShop Elements 3.0 today, I quickly pointed it to my most recent set of photos - a series of RAW image files shot in Italy this fall (Sept 2004). It was my first time out with the Rebel shooting serious RAW work ... primarily using "M" for exposure mode. While some images came out great, others I was less than impressed with. Given that I'm a complete idiot when it comes to Photoshop, I simply lack most of the skills to recover photos that other people seem to have.

Of course, I'm a big advocate of getting it right "in camera" ... which is why I shoot primarily in "M" -- I want complete control of the shooting process, and feel that my skills will improve significanlty more if I shoot this way. I was pleasantly surprised when PSE3 was creating thumbnails for my RAW directory of Italy images, when I noticed that it was "tweaking" some of the thumbnails. Suddenly, under-exposed images were getting brighter in the thumbnail display! Sure enough, PSE3 was doing what it could to "auto-correct" my images for me and make them more appealing! This feature alone will make PSE3 hugely popular with new shooters in my opinion ... as it will give them much better images in a much faster timeframe -- better than the free software that's included with their camera.

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So here's what PSE3 did with a shot of the Pantheon that I took, unfortunately on my last day in Rome with the bright mid-afternoon sun high and very bright and hazy that day... most of the images of the Pantheon (my favorite structure in all of Rome) simply didn't look that great in my opinion -- as you can see in this native image directly out of the Canon FileViewer Utility:


Great structure. Lousy exposure. Not to self, don't shoot into the sun, or anywhere near it.


Here's a look at the image after it came out of PSE3 with absolutely no modifications on my part whatsoever, other than resizing for the web:


Much better image. Zero effort.