It's often talked about as Adobe's less favoured child, full of potential but locked up neglected in the attic with nothing to eat but fish heads, unable to develop fast enough. Price is about half way between Photoshop and Elements. It's purpose-designed for web/mobile UI design and has some great features, particularly, mixing vector and raster designs to make it easier to make elements that are pixel-perfect and can be scaled up and down. If you're looking for a cut price Photoshop alternative for web design, also consider: Those are the main ones from my experience/memory, see also comparisons (e.g.

but there are plenty of animated gif makers if you really really want one. Less time-saving features like slices (personally I rarely used these anyway).Fine for web knockups because the web isn't so good for fine typography either. It's not so good for fine typography and text controls.Fine if you're new to it (actually, I think in many cases the Elements interface is better designed, certainly for newcomers - though finding tutorials will be harder) The interface isn't so familiar to experienced photoshop users.It's not so good for advanced fine photo editing.It's not good at preparing files for professional print.Fine if your images are reasonably simple, which typical knockups will be. working with multiple groups of layers) and more advanced layers features like the full range of adjustment layers. While it supports layers, it's not so good for really complex multi-layered images (e.g.Fine if you're not busy rushed off your feet with design work. You can't customise keyboard shortcuts and are much more limited in customising the interface, workflow, actions etc.Most of the differences between full Photoshop and Photoshop Elements are about convenience, speed and workflow: so the money for full Photoshop may pay for itself when time and productivity mean more money coming in, but when starting out or doing occasional knockups, you can do most of what you could do in full Photoshop using Elements (just maybe not so fast and using more workarounds).Ī few limitations of Elements I'm aware of: For web work, Elements is surprisingly adequate - it's got most of the key features in some form, including layers. For the more general question, ' Is photoshop elements good enough for website mockups?', it is good enough.

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