Photoshop Question

I need to do some basic graphics design. banner pages with wording, create a logo or two, do some digital pic manipulation etc. Question is how much learning time would I have to invest to do anything halfway decent in Photoshop? CS3 or would Elements be suffice? Is this a use it or lose it (how to) product?

I'm a computer geek by trade but never traveled down the graphics universe. Need to get the wifes business web site online and don't want it to look like crap.

Photoshop Elements would be perfect for you. I have Elements version 2.0 (came with a scanner I bought a few years ago) and I've never found it to be lacking. The full CS3 version will give you more filters and effects to play with but all the basic tools and quite a few advanced ones are in Elements.

Never used Elements. If you are a computer geek then photoshop won't take too long to pick up the basics. Just go to google, search a couple of tutorials of things you need like... color balance photoshop tutorial, masking photoshop tutorial and so on. After a few tutorials you wil have the basics down and be able to do what you want.

I'm a computer geek that loves Photoshop, although I'm using mostly Lightroom these days (for photography, for what you're doing Photoshop is perfect)

I think that for your goal, there's not much in Photoshop that you can't do in elements. The big difference seems to be finer grained controls, which is less relavent for things like banners.

-D