Many digital cameras come with free software for organizing and editing your photographs. That software is fine for casual users, but if you are a photo hobbyist advanced enough to, say, read a photo blog, then it’s best to invest in Adobe Photoshop Elements™. Elements was upgraded from version 6.0 to 7.0 last year, so you know it is a mature product. It comprises an organizer for filing and retrieving images and a photo editor for improving them. The basics are well-covered at this point, but I have some suggestions for improvements. These range from searching caption text to improved methods of resizing images, tagging, and making panoramas.

I take quite a few pictures of wildflowers, but I haven’t had much success finding out the names of the flowers. It gets awkward referring to the “yellow flower at the beach,” and it definitely undercuts one’s air of expertise. Looking up the names poses challenges. … Everyone in California knows what ice plant it is, because it is a striking ground cover with yellow or purple flowers, and is common near the coast. Even though I’ve never heard it called anything but ice plant, it is not ice plant. It is really an import from South Africa called Hottentot Fig.