I have been at this for hours. I have had and am not having any fun at all. Installing it to my regular user account worked, but still no presets. I poked around a little more in the program … Photoshop Elements 6, for those who haven’t been following along … and there are all kinds of presets not loading. The reasons why remain somewhat of a mystery, though I know it has to do with some folders for the program requiring administrative permissions. I even tried to work around that to the extent that I knew what I was doing, which wasn’t very well.

So, where does that leave me? I have two boxed copies of a graphics program touted as being for the casual, family user, and it only runs with 100% functionality when you are logged in as an administrator in OS X. I am not going to make my non-admin account an admin account. I am not going to log into and out of accounts every time I want to quickly post a photo to my blog. I am most certainly not allowing my mother admin access to her own computer, and my mother will notice the missing functionality immediately. By the time I install it on her computer, it has to be working 100% with no problems whatsoever. I do not want to deal with her buyer’s remorse while I am busy dealing with my own. I’m going to have to find a way around this problem. If I can’t, the unopened copy is going right back, and I’ll be telling them they should take the opened copy back as well.

It’s funny that during the build-up to the release of Photoshop Elements 6, the universal binary version for the Intel Macs, I read a lot of reviews. I have continued reading reviews right up until it arrived today. Reviews from reputable sources. Not a one … NONE … must have tried running the thing logged into their computer as anything other than an administrator. I’m not a tech writer at a fancy magazine, and I don’t write reviews for a living for some glitzy web site, and I am not a Mac genius, but it would seem to me, if you are marketing software the whole family is supposed to be able to use and enjoy, it would be wise to make sure it works … and works the same way … in every level of user account. Wouldn’t that be Beta Testing 101?

See, I am a beta tester. I have beta tested all manner of software on all manner of computer systems. I am very, very good at it. There are few things I am truly proud of, and that is my ability to push software beyond its limits, do things no person would think to do with it, make it not work, and then write replicate and write out the causes of the issue clearly, often being able to suggest potential remedies and cross effects. Yes, I am good at finding the faults in software, even those tiny little itty bitty ones that require a lengthy chain of specific events to trigger, and I love doing it.

Anyway, new software always starts with full marks for me. It’s new software! I love trying out new software! I find something wrong, and it loses a few marks. It gets fixed, it gets the marks back. Added to that is the user experience. A great piece of software can suck if the colors of the interface match those of someone’s hideous cafe’ racer, for example. So it can lose marks for how it looks or how it sounds and things like that. PE 6 started with full marks. it probably started with over-flowing marks, because I have been using PE 3, and even though it ran like it was underwater on my computer (no universal binary), I liked it. But … not being able to run a consumer level graphics program with 100% functionality unless you are logged in as an administrator is an automatic fail. Once I get this problem worked around, and trust me, I will or I will no longer own this program, it just better be the best consumer level graphics program I have ever used. Really, it has some catching up to do if it wants to get a good review out of me.

I’m just going to uninstall it again, put the DVD back in its case, and wait. Other people will be getting their pre-order copies soon, and then maybe other people will be bitching about it too. In the meantime, I am going to attempt to get some customer support out of Adobe. Wish me luck.

At any rate, I have had enough of messing with this for today. My head hurts, Lin is home, and the cats are being adorable.

This was apparently a problem with PE 3 as well, but it only caused the help files to be unavailable. I noticed that myself, but never looked into it, because missing help files aren’t that much of a biggie for me. Missing presets and effects? Yes, I need those, thank you.