I use Elements 3 and it's all I need. When Photoshop had a half price special for Elements users, I still wasn't tempted. Basically, all I do with my photos is sharpen, sometimes despeckle, levels, shadows and highlights and saturation. Sometimes I do a bit of cloning. That covers about 90% of my photo editing. To save a bunch, you could probably check Ebay for older versions of Elements. Also, Elements does come with a raw converter or, in my case because of my older version, I was able to download the raw converter for my camera.