Photoshop - invitation questions

[lablover]

Hi everyone,
My DS is turning one on October 24. Originally we were just going to have a few family members over but we are now thinking that we may invite a larger number of friends and family over for a casual cookout. Problem is I'm running out of time to come up with an invitation! I was admiring the various invitations that people have created using Photoshop, but we don't have Photoshop. Here are my questions:

I read that you can download Photoshop Elements for free on a trial basis. Does anyone know if that is still true? Would Elements allow me to create a nice invitation? I don't need anything too extravagant, I was thinking a few pictures and then the text. Is it hard to teach yourself the program? Once you create the invitation, how do you print it - do you buy the card stock or take it somewhere?

I'm wondering if this is not realistic for me to do in a week. I may end up going to an invitation shop and ordering something there....

Thanks in advance for any suggestions, advice....

[pixelprincess]

hi, i use Photoshop, not Elements. Have you tried http://www.adobe.com/ to see if you can download a free version? You can also email their CS and find out.

good luck with your invite!

[JacksMommy]

You can actually make pretty nice invites using Microsoft Word or Powerpoint - I actually don't much like Photoshop for things other than manipulating pictures. If you have software that crops your photos/gets rid of red eye, etc, or if you don't need to do any of that, one of those programs will be fine. I do a lot of invitations and such (and fancy that they are pretty nice) using those programs. You can insert pictures using the "insert" function on your tool bar.

Feel free to PM me for any advice.

Laurel
Working Mama to Jack, 6/4/02
EDD #2 12/24/02