Photoshop Elements is designed for digital photographers of all levels of ability. You can start out using it just to keep a record of family events, and move on to develop your creative skills to see where they lead you. By the time you're using the Editor in Expert mode, you're already halfway to being a Photoshop expert, and if you do decide to upgrade to Photoshop itself, you'll be able to hit the ground running.Or you may just stick to Elements. Photoshop has become a byword for image editing, but Photoshop is expensive and you are paying for design, illustration and 3D tools that have no relevance for photographers. It's true that Elements does lack some important Photoshop tools, such as Curves, the Pen tool and CMYK colour mode, for example, but it's easy to overstate the importance of these tools. The fact is that Elements is plenty powerful enough already.The big story with Elements 12 is mobile sharing.