I agree with previous posting, PS Elements 10 is now very advanced package, and a great place to start. Lots of tutorials are built in and on-line. Most magazines cover PS Elements techniques too.
I use CS3, but also bought PS 9.0 last year for teaching beginners, and I see no need for me to upgrade from CS3 to CS5 (whopping great price) while Elements retails at about £70-£80 in UK, you may even pick up PS Elements 9.0 at an even lower price, as Adobe has just launched V 10.0.
Ref LR - some people at our camera club swear by it, but I find it a pain for single image work. I think it suits pros who have a large number of digital files to sort and for making the same changes to a large number of shots, e.g. wedding shoots. LR excels at Digital Image Management but it has a steeper learning curve for beginners.
Finally, about 80-90% of the tools and methods in Elements are the same as the full PS package. so should you upgrade later to CS5; you have in fact already learned the basic and intermediate tools and techniques. Elements is a great way to step up in 2
stages.
Good luck and let's see your work.
John
Rushcliffe Photo Club Member