Let's just get this out right up front; I am not a Photoshop guy. Oh sure, I can adjust the contrast, tweak the color, even sharpen it a little (though I often screw that up). But Layers? To me, layers are blankets that I cover up with when sleeping in the back of the old pickup. Masks? That's what little kids wear on Halloween. Levels and Curves? Levels are what you use to hang a shelf on the wall and curves are what you see when you go to Hooter's for a plate of hot wings. You're getting the picture right? Then imagine my delight when a friend introduced me to a program called Adobe Elements ©.

Now here was something even an old dog such as myself might learn, sort of a Photoshop for the Dense and Lazy. I stuck the camera's memory card in the slot, the Elements screen came up and asked which photos I wanted to import. It then asked if I wanted to delete some of those "dogs" and just keep the best ones. Good idea! It had a "Photo Browser" that could find my photos by date or even more specifically by attaching little "tags" to them. One or two clicks and I could bring up say, all my heron images. Another click revealed all the egrets. But here's the cool part-a double click on a particular image opens it up in something called "Quick Edit". For the purists, there's the "Standard Edit" mode but then you're back in all that curves and levels geek stuff again. Just work with me here.

The "Quick Edit" has MAGIC buttons! You want a Levels adjustment? Just hit Levels> Auto and yee haw, you got an adjustment without all that silly sliding of the arrows all over the place. Contrast? Color? Sharpen? Just hit Auto. And if that's a little too technical for you, there's a button called "Smart Fix" which practically does it all! Okay, okay, so the magic buttons don't always do what you want them to do but most have tweaking capability and if you just have to get it perfect, the old Standard Edit is just a click away.

So here I am, mashing the Auto buttons and attaching tags to everything in sight. I'm sending e-mails to everyone I know letting Mr. Elements resize and attach snazzy frames. I'm lightening the shadows and darkening the highlights. I'm playing with the filters. No more of that digging through help menus trying to understand such things as Pointillism, Polygon Lassos, and Palette Knives. This was FUN!

I should have known it wouldn't last. One day, feeling the need to punch a few more Auto buttons, I fire up the program, get a "boink" sound and an ominous message appears on the screen. Said it was unable to find some kind of .dll file whatever that is and could not open. What does that mean, can't find it? How many places can a file hide? It's only ones and zeros right? Easily recognized you'd think. Where did it go? The case is only so big, wouldn't think there'd be that many places to disappear. Maybe, with all that zooming around that they do, it missed a curve, crashed, and is lying injured and dying waiting for help. Maybe it was kidnapped by terrorists from foreign lands. Maybe a malicious hacker. Maybe a hurricane victim couldn't find their .dll and took mine (but that would be okay.) Maybe someone that's tired of my e-mails.

There was only one thing to do-sit back, relax, and wait for the edition of "Photoshop for the Lobotomy Patient".

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