Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

How many stars to give is hard to decide. The program itself is 5 stars; as an upgrade program-wise from 12 no more than 4 stars since this is a small incremental improvement not a significant one. However, if you have a 64-bit system, Elements 13 will install that on your computer rather than the 32-bit as previously was installed on all computers. This is a significant improvement for persons with 64-bit computers, something that has been requested for a long time. The new "Photomerge Compose" tool is probably the biggest program improvement. This is a very handy tool, and fun to use, that allows you to easily take persons and objects from one photo and put them in another photo or on blank background. I did a great merged photo taking a diver from one photo and putting him in a photo of 2 diving dolphins and I extracted a rooster and put him on a blank background. (You can see them if you click on "see customer images" under the photo of the Ehotoshop Elements 13 box at the top of the page.) When it makes the transfer to a photo,the program does a pretty good job of making it match the surroundings, but you will likely need to do a little touchup to improve the blend. But that is the easy part. The heavy lifting is done by the program. Photomerge Compose works very well and there are excellent step-by-step instructions. Also new to Elements 13 is a revised crop feature. In the previous versions the program suggested one possible crop when you clicked on the crop icon in the Expert and Quick editing modes. With 13, you now get 4 options to choose from, or to use as a starting point for making your own crop. This is not a game changer, but it is interesting to see the options and perhaps helps you to make the best crop. Another new feature that will likely appeal to those who do Facebook is Custom Cover Photo. This allows you to blend your profile photo with a photo of your choice, then add text to complete the job. For both Photomerge Compose and Custom Cover Photo the program has helps that guide you through the process step by step. Regarding helps to guide you through the process, this has been improved in all parts of the program, starting immediately when the program is opened. Now at the top of the work space beside the traditional Quick (edits), Guided (edits) and Expert (edits) there is now "eLive". Clicking on it opens a page full of information, helps and tutorials on the use all all aspects of the program. This will be of great benefit especially to those new to the program who may not know what to ask for in the help section. Some improvements have been made in both Quick (edits) and Guided (edits) modes, including giving the user more options to consider in deciding what changes to make. Also in Quick there is a new "Effects" option that has a lot of presets in a number of different categories, such as "seasons", "toy camera" and "black and white". If you want to make it appear that your photo was taken in a snow storm, for example, go to "Effects" in Quick and choose Seasons>Winter for the snow effect. (Click on "see Customer Image" under the big photo at top of page to see an image made using this tool.) As always, Photoshop Elements 13 is intended for users at all levels of experience with photo editing. If brand new, start with "Quick" mode where the program does almost everything for you. When you are comfortable, move to "Guided", where you still get a lot of help, but have more freedom to make choices. The next step, and not a difficult one to take, is the "Expert" where you can choose and make use of all the editing tools the program provides. However, even when using the tools in "Expert" there is no reason not to continue to make use of the excellent tools in the "Guided" mode. For example, I just finished processing a photo where the use of the "Zoom Burst Effect" tool in "Guided" was the most significant thing done to it. (Click on "see Customer Image under the big photo at top of page to see an image made using this tool.) Another tool in Guided I use when the photo is right is Out Of Bounds. (Click on "Customer Image under the big photo at top lop to see an image made using this tool.) For those new to photo editing, don't be intimidated. It is obvious that the program developers have worked hard to make this version of Elements even more new-user friendly, starting with the prominently displayed "eLive" and continuing with more complete helps in the Quick and Guided Modes. For Elements users with versions 11 or previous, you should definitely upgrade. There have been enough changes in 12 and 13 to warrant an upgrade. For elements users with version 12, it will be your call. It will depend on how important having a 64-bit program is to you, and/or whether the new Photomerge Compose and Custom Photo Cover are of interest to you. I don't do Facebook so the latter is of no interest to me, but I do have a 64-bit computer and I made a great photo with the Photomerge Compose, so I will be biting the bullet and upgrading.