Submitted on 29 February 2012 | 06:51:08

Review by Jack Olson for Adobe Photoshop Premiere Elements 8 Rating: Revised 06/03/2010 Premiere Elements/Photoshop 8 has siroeus problems that render it useless to a majority of users. Initially problems were traced to conflicts with Realtek Audio and Nvidia graphics card installation software, now users with other hardware configurations are also reporting frequent crashes and stability issues with the PE/PSE 8 bundle. These type of conflicts should have been sorted out by Adobe in beta testing before the product was shipped, unfortunately as of this date, a fix has not yet been found. Be prepared to get under the hood of your PC for many hours of quality time to install new drivers,regedit, employ multiple workarounds and endless online help from India. Avoid this software if you use Nvidia graphics drivers or AVCHD 1080 video format. Beware reviewers giving this software bundle high marks, most are basing their reviews solely on Photoshop Elements and ignoring Premiere Elements 8 and it's numberous stability problems. Adobe has been actively soliciting professional authors to write favorable reviews to offset real reviews made by actual paying not compensated customers. Adobe released a patch 8.01 (02/26/2010) for Premiere Elments 8, users are reporting that stability is somewhat improved but still fails to live up to Adobe's advertising and the quality of Photoshop Elements 8. No measurable improvement in speed or compatibility with AVCHD format or 1080 HD video.Download the free 30 day trial version from Adobe to test compatibility with your PC before purchasing this product or wait untill Adobe releases newer version to solve the stability issues many are experiencing. You may also wish to try PE7 which has very good stability and isn't bloated with marketing gimmicks and useless new features of PE8. - I received my copy of Premiere Elements 8 and Photoshop Elements 8 today. Installation was fairly easy with both programs but I can't see any improvements over PE7 unless you consider being even more resource dependent an improvement. The one feature that I was really hoping for in this version continues to be absent, PE 8 cannot write Blu-Ray format to a file, disk only. The conversion of videos from PE7 to PE8 also caused problems with several scenes skipping frames, dropping sound and repeatedly hanging the program during rendering of a four minute video. I have to reboot my computer frequently as the software will refuse to re-open after being used. I have a one month old Intel I7 running Win7 64 with twelve gig of ram, what does it take to satisfy PE8? If you have an AVCHD video camera do not buy this product, try Sony Vegas or another editing package that is compatible with that format. The very few people that have reported success with PE8 are not using HD and are editing very brief lower resolution videos. This software may work on a thirty second low resolution YouTube video but it most definitely is not suitable for a twenty minute HD event. Photoshop Elements 8 is a slight improvement over version 7 if you discount the image organizer which I found to be useless and slowed my system with its background processing. I would recommend buying Photoshop Elements 8 as a standalone but would pass on the bundle because of Premiere Elements 8 shortcomings. I recommend that all users of the Elements 7 bundle skip this upgrade as it offers nothing in usefull functionality or performance. I honestly don't see how Adobe can justify calling PE8 an upgrade , it is simply destabilized PE7 in a new box. The best feature is that PE8 does not overwrite PE7 so you will still be able to access and edit your PE7 videos which PE8 refuses to update or edit. Save your rupees for PE 9, 10, or 11, that may offer improvements over PE7 PE8 is the upgrade that never was. Bad Software: What to Do When Software Fails