Complete Idiot needs photoshop info...?

So I hear all this talk about a fabulous photo and visual editing tool called photoshop. I've seen some wonderful examples of digital art that are claimed to have been done "in Photoshop" and are apparently very easy to do "in Photoshop." Photoshop, photoshop, photoshop!

I thought it might be interesting to get the Photoshop program and try my own hand at this sort of thing.

It turns out there are several kinds of photoshop. There's Photoshop CS2. There's something else called "Photoshop Elements 4.0." There's Photoshop Album 2.0. There's also something called "Premiere Elements 2.0" which apparently has something to do with Photoshop.

The product descriptions on the Adobe website all sound like the same thing to me.

Can someone with some knowledge sort this out for me? What are the above-mentioned products and how do they differ from one another? Why would I buy one over the other(s)?

Thanks!

Complete Idiot needs photoshop info...?norton internet security 2008

When people say photoshop, they usually mean Photoshop CS2. If people are talking about Photoshop Elements they usually refer to is as just "elements".

Photoshop takes some time to learn. I took a 3 unit college class in Photoshop, and I only know about half of the program. (Which, by the way, is more then you really need to know to use Photoshop well). Until you learn photoshop, nothing is easy. Once you do, everything is easy.