Newbie question re: Adobe Elements 5.0

I have just made the jump from film to digital, buying the Canan 40D, so bear with me:

The camera came with the Canon software, but I have purchased Adobe Elements 5.0. Do I need any aspect of the Canon software if I am using Elements? Do you need the Canon software to download images from the camera to the computer, or can it be done with just Elements 5.0? Are the photos from the camera downloaded into MY PICTURES and then accessed from the editing software I am using?

I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible in getting started with th computer/editing end of digital photography. Any guidance/help is appreciated.

You may want to try out the DPP software, but I seldom use it---I use LR then PE5 and according to the free LR video tutorials, PE5 has about 70% of the features found in CS3.

I've found PE 5 sufficient for what I need, but then I'm not a Professional at all!!

I don't use any of the Canon software but for DPP occasionally---

I highly recommend that you buy a $15 card reader. It will greatly simplify and speed up downloading. It will appear as a drive in My Computer and from there you can simply copy and paste or drag and drop. For a beginner PSE 5 is certainly adequate and more. After you've gained some experience you may want to try other more advanced software.

I would suggest a Scott Kelby book on Elements. I don't if he has one out on 5.0 yet but if he does it is well worth the money.

Does PSE5 handle RAW import easily? I mean, once they've updated to recognize the 40D?

No problem with my 20D raw files

Thanks. Trying to decide between PSE% and Aperture.

tzalman wrote in post #3922115
I highly recommend that you buy a $15 card reader. It will greatly simplify and speed up downloading. It will appear as a drive in My Computer and from there you can simply copy and paste or drag and drop. For a beginner PSE 5 is certainly adequate and more. After you've gained some experience you may want to try other more advanced software.

Agree 100% with above.

Card-reader also helps solve a host of other problems when trying to download directly from camera.

If you want to do RAW, use Canon's DPP first... much better than the RAW converter in Elements (plus Elements won't read your 40d RAW images... yet. Jpegs are fine, of course.)

Other than that, happy shooting!

What makes Canon's DPP better? Are you suggesting using it to get the RAW files ready for import into PS5?

If I use the card reader, where are the photos being downloaded to on the computer and how do I access them from Elements 5.0?

snackyx wrote in post #3922567
If I use the card reader, where are the photos being downloaded to on the computer and how do I access them from Elements 5.0?

Anywhere you want to. Drag and drop the files. It views the card reader as another disk-drive.

In Elements either open the file from the editor, or import them into your catalog.

LarsThorwald wrote in post #3922543
What makes Canon's DPP better? Are you suggesting using it to get the RAW files ready for import into PS5?

More adjustments... applying settings to multiple images at once... better color renditions (for me at least.) Access to Picture Styles, if you like that. Dust spotting in RAW, cropping in RAW, and more.

Yes, typically would do RAW adjustment in DPP, export as .tif or .jpg, then import into PSE.