My first encounter with real photo editing came when I worked on a pictorial directory for my church. I learned how to use Photoshop Elements to make a page background and place other images or photos onto that page in layers--each image I placed, became another layer and I learned to select individual layers to edit. It was best to edit individual images before placing them on the page, and so I whitened a lot of teeth, colored in where tinted hair had grown out or tamed unattractive wisps, removed some wrinkles and took out eyeglass reflections by coloring in the eyes and skin. Group pictures where a lot of people were wearing glasses took a lon-n-n-g time to edit. Nevertheless, when I had done the best I could on the pages and they were ready to send to the printer, they had to be sent in RGB three-color format. The printer said that was acceptable and that he would be able to convert them into the professional CMYK four-color format with his full-featured Adobe Photoshop program.

Adobe Photoshop CS has the CMYK 4-color support but can also do the three-color RGB format, a healing brush that blends repaired pixels perfectly into the surrounding image, advanced layer manipulation and color management, an enhanced file browser, ability to create panoramas by merging photos and many, many other features of which a professional photographer or graphics artist would make use. I can certainly accomplish anything I want to do with this program and someone with more experience could do much more.

Adobe Photoshop CS also includes Adobe ImageReady CS for Web graphics design and allows the creation of non-square pixels using different aspect ratios for making files for DVD, video and film. Thus Photoshop CS is recommended for video and filmmakers.

Creating a family history book is going to be my next big project and I'll be attempting photo restoration from old family pictures and scanning other cherished items like the letter we found in which my grandfather proposed to his wife around the turn of the twentieth century.

System requirements for Adobe Photoshop CS are: Intel Pentium III or 4 processor, MS Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3 or Windows XP, 192 MB of RAM (256MB recommended), 280 MB available hard-disk space, color monitor with 16-bit color or greater video card, 1024x768 or greater monitor resolution, CD-ROM drive, and Internet or phone connection for product activation.

A 30-day trial version of Adobe Photoshop CS is available for download at http://www.adobe.com/products/tryadobe/main.jsp