I have 'em both. Perhaps the biggest difference is that the full version is CMYK-capable, which is where you go if you want to use a real press for your final product. There is a boatload of special effects and filters, too, but that may not be important to a lot of people. Some, however, such as the "Healing Brush" and the "Patch Tool" are worth their weight in gold.

For me, having Alpha capability is a huge thing. Removing it simply crippled Elements for me. It's like using MS Works as a word processor: it has a lot of great tools, but by removing the ability to maintain "Styles", it makes it useless for a serious writer.

But I would say for the photo enthusiast, and even serious photographer, Elements is easily more than enough. It adds a whole bunch of Wizards, updateable "recipes" for doing special things, built in previewing, and so on.

I figure that with all the competing new digital-camera Paint products, Adobe felt it was time to get back some of the market share in the low to middle-end. There are a lot of people who just won't or can't pay the big bucks for PhotoShop. ... Mike