I have just purchased this software after finally giving up on Corel's Paint Shop Photo Pro X3 which I brought last year. I decided to change suites as the performance of the Corel software became unacceptable after I upgraded to a full frame DSLR body and the file sizes increased. That software slowed right down and crashed after every three or four edited pictures as it suffers memory leaks it seems. I had the previous version of that software that I got a couple of years previously and have now decided to 'switch camps'.

Anyhow, this software is as fast as you like even handling the 35mb RAW files my camera produces and there are no crashes or hangs (obviously having a decent PC is a must as the software is resource intensive). The tool set is good but I do hear from friends that it is no real improvement over Elements 9. I do like the fact that your workflow can be quick in this software even when editing each photo individually. There are a reasonable selection of automatic edits that you can do like colour correction and sharpening that actually work well.

The user interface/workspace trays required some reconfiguring for me but after about an hour I had the toolbars and palletes set up how I prefer them. Familiarity returned for me and I was soon able to do all the edits I used to do on my old software without the frustration and the pleasure cameback to editing for me.

I think if you haven't already got a recent version of Elements then this software is well worth the purchase and I found it worth changing from a competitor's product line.

For reference purposes, my PC specification is: Intel Pentium Dual Core 3.2ghz Processor, 3gb 1066mhz DDR2 RAM, 2 x 500gb Seagate Barracuda hard drives, Invidia Geforce 8800GTS 320mb graphics card and Windows 7 Professional operating system 32 bit. (This of course well over the minimum requirement for this software).