Welcome, Annie. I've always thought that Paint Shop Pro was a very good program which could do at least as much as Elements. Particularly good with web images, as I remember, with slicing and animation. It also has layers, masks and just about everything else you need. However, if you're going to be possibly moving "up" to the full Photoshop eventually - presumably to get to a professional standard? - PSE is a good move for you. It's not actually "Photoshop Light", though, and it has a marketing strategy all of its own - indeed, it appears at times that Adobe want to make sure it's a separate entity altogether to fill a particular niche in the market. As you no doubt know, though, it can use any Photoshop compatible plug-ins (as does PSP and a couple of others) and can run many (but not all) of the Actions created in full Photoshop, sometimes with a slight alteration of file-type.

It's interesting to go through a (full) Photoshop tutorial just to see what you can and cannot do in PSE - sometimes there's a work-around for PSE, sometimes you can ignore a step without too much of a problem and sometimes the technique described is just not possible in PSE.

Annie, welcome, and when i first started i was ready to uninstall and throw it out, with so many helpful people you will get along fine. There is a lot to absorb just take your time and try all the challenges you can.