Photoshop is the undisputed champ in the professional world of photo corrections, compositing, and manipulation. None of the work I do can be presented without going through PS first to finish them off.

That being said, the folks above are right - it looks like your needs would be better suited in Illustrator or CorelDraw. Any photo corrections and manipulations you needed in the images in the link above could have been done in Elements - which retails for about $100.

Unless you're going into more hardcore manipulation and compositing, you don't need to spend the money - just get Photoshop Elements for your basic photo editing.

Good luck - hope that helps-
-Lew ;-)