Differences Between Photoshop CC and Photoshop Elements:

7 minutes read
Written By
Updated On

Photoshop is a well-known tool that has made its mark in every industry. It is the first choice for any creative industry looking to improve its advertising, logo design, and branding. Photoshop is the most advanced digital imaging software on the market, with a plethora of features and options.

Photoshop Elements and Photoshop CC are two of the versions of Photoshop that we are going to discuss in this article.

Adobe Photoshop elements vs Adobe Photoshop cc, which one to choose?

Before starting to compare Photoshop elements and Photoshop CC, we shall look into what are Photoshop Elements and Photoshop CC.

What is Photoshop CC?

Adobe Photoshop CC is the most advanced digital imaging software used mainly focused on professional photographers, video professionals, and designers. The software is loaded with a wide variety of features and it has so much to offer for its users.

Mastering at least a 5-10 % of its features can make you a pro user with so much knowledge, that’s the depth of Photoshop CC.

The software was launched in 2013 as a successor to the previous Photoshop CS6. With this software, the creative cloud feature of Photoshop came into existence.

What Is Photoshop Elements Tool?

Adobe Photoshop Elements is image editing software designed for budding photographers and editors. The elements software contains the majority of the features found in the professional Photoshop version. The only difference is that Elements has fewer and simpler options.

Fewer and simpler options to work with images doesn’t make Photoshop Elements any less powerful than its big brother Photoshop CC. Photoshop Elements won’t allow you to manually use any tool on the Photoshop document you are working on, instead, the software does the job for you.

The fact that Elements not allowing users to manually use the tool will reduce the risk of damaging the document where you should repair damaged PSD files using third-party software.

Difference between  Photoshop and Photoshop Elements

As mentioned earlier, Photoshop Elements is a lightweight version of Photoshop CC which inherits some of the features from the latter. Now let us look into differences between these two in terms of features.

Features of Photoshop CC:

Photoshop CC is the most powerful imaging software is loaded with a variety of features. It is highly impossible to talk about all the features of Photoshop CC in one article. The features presented above are some unique features that are not available in Photoshop Elements.

  • CMYK mode

It refers to four colors CMYK printing process where cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks are mixed to generate a range of colors. This mode accurately describes the process of color reproduction in printing. Hence this is often used in the preparation of image printing.

cmyk mode

Image Source: Addictive tips

  • LAB color mode

It is similar to other color modes like RGB and CMYK where it can be defined as a global color model where you can specify any given color by giving numeric values across different channels.

lab color mode

Image Source: Photo.net

  • Channel mixer

It mixes color channels, can be used to repair bad channels and create greyscale images from color images.

channel mixer

Image Source: macprovideo.com

  • Bristle Brushes

These are the new set of brushes in Photoshop CC that allows you to paint with virtual bristle brushes.

  • Paths Palette

Palettes are an essential part of Photoshop, they let you customize how tools in toolbox work. Path palette is one such kind of palette.

Other features like editing history log, Text on a path, advanced text formatting, advanced color enhancement, advanced web features, Customizable tool pre-sets keyboard shortcuts, and menus and more.

Note: Either you are using CC or Elements you cannot avoid errors on your Photoshop application resulting in damaged PSD files. To fix those damaged PSD files all you need is a simple and straightforward PSD repair tool such as Remo PSD repair.

Features of Photoshop Elements:

Though Photoshop Elements is a lightweight version of Photoshop CC, it has some unique features which are not available in the latter. The following are some of the unique features of Photoshop Elements

  • Cookie-cutter tool

This tool in Photoshop CC is a custom shape maker for images. It is also capable of creating a mask and hide everything out of it.

  • Quick Edit mode
quick edit mode

This mode presents many quick adjustment types using visual previews. You can select any image from the list of thumbnails and fine-tune it or click on auto to let the software do the job for you.

  • Guided Edit Mode

The guided edit mode in Photoshop Elements takes you to step by step to perform edits as well as allows you to restore old photos.

guided edit
  • Expert Edit Mode

This feature is one of the closest to the Photoshop CC where you get features like masking, layers which are common Photoshop

expert mode
  • Multi-file process mode

This mode lets you process multiple files with no need to record an action. Photoshop Elements lets you create templates for Photobooks, greeting cards, calendars. There are other features like easy sharing for social media sites like Facebook, flicker, etc.

Note: If you ever encounter any PSD related errors on your Mac computer, you can still repair PSD files on Mac using Remo Repair PSD

These are some of the features of Photoshop Elements that are not available in Photoshop CC.

Though all features of Photoshop CC is not available in Photoshop Elements, some of the features can be simulated using other tools in Elements. There are some features hidden in Elements that can only be accessed after certain actions from Photoshop CC. These are the major differences between Photoshop CC and Photoshop Elements with respect to the features.

When it comes to pricing, Photoshop Elements and Photoshop CC are vastly different. Photoshop CC is more expensive than Photoshop Elements. Photoshop CC is only for profound graphic designers who do extensive image editing, whereas Photoshop Elements is for intermediate users who want to learn the basics.

Though Photoshop Elements is built focusing on intermediate users, it might give you a hard time when you come across some error. As an intermediate user, trying to fix Photoshop error cannot open the PSD file is a big thing. These are common problems that any user will come across while using software like Photoshop and numerous solutions are available online.

Learn about how to enhance the editing performance of Photoshop. In this article.

About the Author: Molly Owen

Molly is the Lead Technical Specialist with distinguished knowledge and understanding of Mac computers and operating systems. Being a veteran photographer and video recovery specialist, Molly’s expertise in video formats and file repair has helped restore a lot of videos and cherished memories of users. As a technical specialist, she also believes in learning and…