Elements+ vs XXL

Anyone had experience with these using Photoshop Elements?
I see there's quite a large price difference, I'm not looking to do extreme processing, more things like CA correction, jpeg WB, that type of stuff. Would Elements+ suffice for that, or would one be better to jump right in with XXL?
No, I'm not interested in going the drip feed subscription route, not in the slightest.
Interested in your thoughts

Edit -experimenting with Elements 23 of that makes any difference. Currently doing the Gaussian Blur layer? treatment for CA, but an easier or quicker way to adjust jpeg WB would be welcome

I was using Elements+ with PSE for quite a few years until about 12-18 months ago when I became aware of Elements XXL. After trialling XXL I find it much more user-friendly but that is just a personal preference.

Both E+ and XXL claim to "unlock" the full Ps features still hidden in PSE. However I have found some features in XXL which I cannot find in E+ but that does not mean they are not there somewhere.

Basically, for all intents and purposes the main difference between the two plugins is the way they present the unlocked Ps features.

Elements+ groups all the features together in different panels under File -> Automation Tools or in the Effects Panel while XXL inserts all the extra Ps features into the appropriate existing PSE menus or as extra icons in the PSE workspace The inserted Ps menu options are optionally highlighted in blue so you can easily identify which are the normal PSE options and which are the added XXL options.

For me, with XXL it feels much more like I have received a turbo-boosted upgrade to PSE.

Both E+ and XXL have free trial periods. I always advise to download both, trial them and then choose which suits best.

Have you tried out the free silkypix se for Panasonic cameras, it is not the slickest of software { though to be fair I have not used it for a while } but can give very good results

www.isl.co.jp/SILKYPIX/english/p/

😁😁 Done better than that. I have the full camera agnostic version of Silkypix 10 Pro, the full Panasonic version of Silkypix 11 Pro, and the full Pro version of 8 or 9. Can't remember. I always buy them on sale, I think the most I've ever paid is about $100 Au for the camera agnostic version. Very reasonably priced I think. I like it very much, it does give very good results, and makes shooting raw just as easy as jpeg because it remembers a lot of your camera settings as far as picture style. I'm one of the weirdos that actually likes Panasonic colours, Silkypix gives identical converted raw colours to camera JPEGs, so you can mix and match at will. About the only thing I find lacking, is CA correction, and perhaps noise reduction.
I have the first version of Pure raw, 1.6?, but Silkypix doesn't like the DNG's? it outputs for some reason, now I have a faster computer I'm using it a bit more (Pure raw) Winter and all that. So there's that too.

Andrei Doubrovski, the creator of Elements+, is a member at www.photoshopelementsandmore.com and provides excellent, prompt support straight from the horses mouth so to speak.

I was sort of leaning towards Elements+ Not concerned about the features being in their own tab or menu, there's only a couple that I'm really interested in using anyway. At the moment. And the price is right.
I'm guessing the CA correction would integrate itself into the raw converter? Anything else like the colour balance, I'm happy to just open up that particular tab to make use of.

Not exactly.

The ACR raw converter in PSE is not actually updated by E+ or XXL but both have an option inside PSE to apply additional raw corrections to those in PSE's ACR in a separate dialogue box. The CA corrections is in the Lens Correction tab of the Raw Corrections dialogue box.

The Raw Corrections dialogue box is not a raw converter.

I

Been tinkering with it, it looks like the corrections/adjustments are made in the raw corrections dialogue box, then applied through the raw converter. Is that correct?

The only thing that's annoying me so far, is that you can't zoom into the image during the E+ corrections, or I haven't discovered how to do that. A bit frustrating when you can't zoom in and inspect high contrast edges when correcting CA for instance. The colour balance window/preview image is also really quite small. Running windows 11 Pro.

I am not an expert on what happens under the hood or the finer points of Elements+.

The creator of Elements+ is a member on photoshopelementsandmore as posted earlier. He will be able to help you much more than I can.

I'm not sure what technique/tool you currently use but on the rare occasions I need to fix the WB on someone else's jpeg I use the ACR in PSE. It normally does a pretty good job.

How do you use ACR on a JPEG in elements? Genuine question.

I'm using PSE 2020 but your PSE 2023 should be similar.

From the top menu bar select File -> Open In Camera Raw.

Then navigate to the folder your jpeg is in and click it. The jpeg will then open in ACR.

The light blue shaded menu items are those inserted by Elements XXL. With Elements+ they will be in the E+ panels somewhere.

I'll give that a try tonight

Well there ya go. I never knew ACR could do that with jpeg's. Works a treat. Thanks Danno.

You're welcome 🙂