I use Elements 7 for most of my editing, both RAW and after conversion. It's fairly easy to use once you know the tools. Backscatter is always difficult, but there are ways to minimize it. The easiest tool for it is the clone tool, but it's not the most accurate. Don't make your stamp too big, and try different areas to clone from. If it sucks, just go to edit and undo clone. You can isolate your subject using the magnetic lasso, which requires patience. If you then use "invert" you can adjust everything except the subject. Most of the tools I use for color and light are in the enhance menu. Under "color", you can adjust for skin tone. This is one way to adjust your white balance after the fact. Another method for that is "remove color cast". This is basically a white balance tool. Find a white or neutral gray area and click on it. If you don't like the result, look for a different spot that's better. In "adjust lighting" you can use the shadows and highlights adjustment to add light to areas that are too dark, tone down blown highlights and increase midrange contrast, which really helps on an overexposed shot. You can also use the "brightness and contrast" adjustment to add some pop. This adjustment is also useful after isolating your subject if you want to get rid of background backscatter by darkening the background. I almost always use the unsharp mask (usually 25% @ .2 pixels) and I use about 50% on "adjust sharpness" on the motion blur and lens blur settings. Keep your pixel settings low or you'll end up with a blurry picture. Same goes for Filters. You can use the "Noise>despeckle" or "Noise>remove dust and scratches" for little stuff, but if you use more than about .5 pixels, you'll blur the picture. If you don't like the result, go to edit and undo it.
Always, always, always "Save as" and use a different name for any new save so you don't lose your original. I use things like "DSC1050 PSE" or "PSE sm" after I adjust size to 800x600 for online sharing. If I crop I'll make it "crop PSE sm". If you get a prompt that says "do you want to replace this?" always cancel, never say yes. Good luck.
