Well I'm in the comfortable positions that I have almost all the programs used for digital scrapbooking: DIP, PS CS, PSP 8 and PhotoImpact. I used DIP for a while, but find that it was limited especially when I wanted to change back things like the opacity. PSP 8 was something I found really hard also because I have the dutch version and all the tutorials are in English. Okay and now your question. I use PS Cs but just starting out, so the things I do you can also do in PSE. I really love PS, it´s true that the learning curve is steep, but with all the tut´s online and the many people using them who you can turn to for help is very helpful and has helped me to self-learn PS. The downside is the learningcurve. I have the lucky psition that my best friend has done a course in PS for her work in the advertisingbusiness, so she helps me a lot. I´m not sure if I would use PS if I didn´t have her to turn to. She helped me a lot with tutorials online I failed to do.
PI was the only program I failed to self- learn. BUT there´s an extremely helpful beginnerscourse at pirc-bw dot com. I just finished the first level out of three and I love it. I don´t ude it often though, because my computer is too old and slow for the program to use for scrapbookpages. The little stuff from the course goes very well. I think when I have a new computer I´ll use it more often together with PS. The very downside to this program is that not many people use it so for questions it´s much harder to get an answer, also on the pirc bulletinboard you don´t always get answers. which I never experienced with PS. I hope I helped you a bit. Feel free to pm me when you got more questions!

Monique