We don’t do much photo editing so we gave our Photoshop Elements away some time ago, but we were thinking about buying the new version just so we could use Bokeh. Then we read the reviews at Amazon.com. People are saying that the old version is almost as expensive as the new, signaling high demand for the old.

Newer isn’t always better, and this is true of many programs. One user commented that Photoshop Elements appeared to reach its peak in Version 3. Most user comments say the newer versions are too complicated. A marked complaint was that the later versions display tiny type on a black background. Even people with excellent eyesight complained about straining to read it and urged people not to buy the program until Adobe fixes it. We noticed they haven’t fixed it and it’s been out for 14 months. Why do companies sometimes gunk up a nice program and make it worse in new versions? Why to sell new product, of course.

Meanwhile, back to Bokeh, which lets you do things like focus attention on a person in a photo while blurring the background or simulate fast action without the use of a special lens.  Check out their gallery at Alienskin.com.

Nitro PDF adds some tools to the ordinary PDF viewing experience. Say someone sends you a form as a PDF file. This is annoying because normally you can’t edit a PDF. Meaning you can’t fill out the form; you would have to print it out and then fill in the blanks. Nitro PDF lets you fill in any PDF form and add comments.

The new version 2.0 also lets you highlight words, add a signature, and save the whole thing without leaving Internet Explorer or Firefox. It’s also faster than other PDF readers. You can download it at NitroPDF.com.

In even more explosive news, Nitro PDF offers free conversions from PDF to Word at PDFtoWord.com. The converted file is emailed to you seconds later. It did a great job on our test files. They also offer free conversion to Excel files at PDFtoExcelOnline.com.

The new PDF Reader from Nuance PDF is free and opens PDFs better than Adobe.  PDFs are documents that retain their formatting. The process was developed by Adobe, which has long offered a free PDF Reader.  However, the new Nuance program has more features and does it better.

Nuance PDF Reader will convert PDFs to other formats, such as Word or Excel, for example.  This makes it possible to edit them. You can also annotate the PDFs. Along the way, the Nuance Reader has addressed a growing security issue, turning off “JavaScript processing,” which can make computers vulnerable to hackers. A recent report from McAfee, a leader in anti-virus products, predicted Adobe would become the primary target for hackers and virus writers this year. In all fairness, Adobe is working to correct the problem. We won’t find out if it works till the next hacker attack

Nuance PDF Reader has a built-in SharePoint Connector, so users can save PDFs directly to Microsoft’s SharePoint storage.  Get the program at nuance.com/PDFreader.

Nuance PDF Reader will convert PDFs to other formats, such as Word  and Excel.  This makes it possible to edit them.  The program also addresses a security issue, turning off “JavaScript processing,” which can make your computer vulnerable to hackers. A recent report from McAfee, a leader in anti-virus products, predicted Adobe would become the primary target for hackers and virus writers this year.

Nuance PDF Reader  has a built-in SharePoint Connector, so users can save PDFs directly to Microsoft’s SharePoint storage.  You can also annotate PDFs. Get the program at nuance.com/PDFReader.

The latest big bees and little bees are Adobe’s “Premiere” and the newer and cheaper “Premiere Elements 3.” Premiere is a program designed for professional video editing and lists for $849 at Adobe.com. Premier Elements 3 is also for video editing, has many of the same features, and lists for $99. We found it for $60 at Amazon.

The most important new feature of Premiere Elements 3 is the storyboard. You can drag scenes onto the storyboard and also drop in transitions (like “fade to black”), soundtracks, narration and other good stuff. Scenes and single frames can be edited like individual photos: change the contrast, color saturation, lighten, darken, sharpen, etc. You can import any video, whether it be your own creation or something you found on the Internet.

Almost all editing action in Premiere Elements 3 is drag and drop; it’s as easy as falling off a log (or a canoe if you’re the kind who likes to stand up). Nothing is deleted, so you can change your mind and go back if you preferred an earlier edit. An “autosave” feature saves different versions automatically.

The tutorials that come with Premiere Elements 3 are totally great, as they say in the software biz. They come in book form and you can take your time. You can download free trial versions of Premiere and Premiere Elements 3 from Adobe.com/downloads . Use the alphabetical list to select the programs.

By painterly effects we mean making a photograph look like it was done with a paint brush, or charcoal, crayon, pencil, chalk, etc. You can also get special effects from Microsoft Digital Image Suite, which we found for $30 at Amazon.com, and Adobe’s Photoshop Elements 3 for $86, also at Amazon. The full Photoshop was $580.

Corel’s Painter is the granddaddy of all such programs, but it’s $429 at the Corel.comWeb site. There’s a cut-down version called Corel Painter Essentials 3 for $79, and you can get it for either Mac or Windows. You can also get painterly effects using Ulead’s excellent PhotoImpact, even if you go back to version 5, which we found for $5 at eBay and $10 at Amazon. The latest version, version 12, is a download at TuCows.com for $90.

There are differences in all these programs, however. While they can all add effects that will make any picture look hand-drawn, each one tends to be better at some effects than others. This is unfortunate for the customer, who may have a strong preference for certain of those effects.

Summing it all up, we thought the Snap Art program from Alien Skin was worth the price. You can download trial versions of all but Microsoft’s for free by going to the companies’ Web sites: Adobe at Adobe.com; Corel at Corel.com.