Why Adobe Seems to be Losing It

So I finally got around to updating to the combined Photoshop Elements 10 and Premiere Elements 10 package earlier this week. From past experience I knew this would go better by uninstalling the old version first, and installing new after. Of course that took a good bit of time, and so today was the first chance I had to actually start working with the products. And I can't say I have been impressed.

Opened PS Elements, and it wanted me to give it my Adobe ID. OK did that, it confirmed that I had one and had an online account, linked my online account, and continued to spin while getting that info. Decided if that took so long I had better do the same to Premiere, so closed PS Elements first, then opened Premiere Elements, and sure enough I had to login again (hello... if you have asked me once can't you pass that along), and go through the same thing.

Fine. So now I go back to PS Elements, and this time it asks me to register. Why didn't it ask me to register last time. Still I click on OK... and it asks me to login again. What the...

Finally get into the product, am pleased to see that it does work with the T2i RAW files (one of the major reasons I upgraded), and go to resize the image. The image resize shows the pixels, and then has the box to change the size in inches. I go to change it from inches, and it gives me several options - but none of them are pixels! So I click on "Learn more about image size" to see how to fix that. Which launches the help screen that now tries to install Air, except Air can't install because Help is running...

Seriously. Did anyone at Adobe actually USE THIS PRODUCT before shipping? I understand the desire to make folks want to purchase the full product, but having something this awkward that still manages to run slow on an i7 with 12 gigs of ram makes me think that someone wrote the program for the Mac, ran the code through a translator, and then compiled and shipped without actually testing first. Because I just refuse to believe anyone could have tested this and said "Yes, this is a user experience I would be proud to tell my friends about".

So I close the request to install Air, and it churns and churns for about two minutes before taking me to a web page that tells me what I am seeing, but nothing about any actual setup options. And it covers half the description with a prompt asking me if I want to look at the help from earlier versions of the product, which makes reading the help for this version that much harder.

OK... now that I have that off my chest, I will say that the product does let me do a lot of useful things that will help improve my workflow so that I don't have to use the Canon Software to turn the RAW into a TIFF, and then edit that with another tool to create a final PNG. But it still feels slow compared to tools such as Paint.Net, and I really have to wonder why they make everything so hard to find.

In any case, it may just be me, but I remember back when I felt bad about using the free products because the Adobe software versions were so much easier to use that I felt like I was being penny wise and pound foolish. But if this is their future direction, then I think they shouldn't be surprised to see more than just their Flash market dry up...