If anyone lives near a Frys and has been on the lookout for a graphics tablet, now's the time...
The Wacom Graphire package now includes Photoshop Elements 2 (like the European one has for a while) and Frys is doing a special for $80! Whattadeal!
I've been trying out Elements 2 for a month now and I haven't missed a single Photoshop 7 feature when making pixel art for my adventure game. If anything it's a little easier to use (eg New From Clipboard; Ctrl-Z multiple undos, rather than having to press Shift-Ctrl-Z...).
Shift-Ctrl-Z does multiple undoes in PS7!?
Errr, make that Ctrl-Alt-Z.
Heh.
In PS7, you can set ctrl-z to do up to 20 undos or something. Enough for me.
But yeah, that's a good deal anyway. I whole-heartedly recommend a pen tablet for anyone who deals with graphics.
Does Photo Elements 2 have the "Curves" function?
That's the biggest thing I miss while using Elements.
Good question, EW. Probably not. I'll check later.
I never found the curves functionality to be very useful - partially because the interface is so bad, and partially because I didn't manage to rasterise the curves to aliased lines. Corel Draw did it much better 10 years ago.