I use photoshop daily for work and also for personal use.
If you are serious about your art, it is an investment, I have been using it for about 6 years and I have only scratched the surface.
I have tried to learn gimp, painshop pro and others to get a feel, but I found that I always go back.
Some people say it has a difficult learning curve, and in part I agree, but I think is not so much hard but very time consuming. You need to really play with it for a veeeery long time before you get the hang of it properly, but once you do, you will suddenly realise you could never have done without it.

Elements is a nice app, but I have had a look and it feels very basic, you only get 10% of what you get in photoshop for a 3rd of the price.
if you really can't afford it, I would go for painshop pro or CorelDraw.
Of these two I would reccomend Paintshop, I did try it years ago and found it to be the closest to photoshop and the easiest to use, and it does have a good price tag too.

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-'I curse the day my curiosity led me to investigate the strange stain inside
the atomic acelerator chamber'-
The Nuked Bug