louis, do you actually have your Layers pallet open in Elements? If you don’t, there might be layers in an image, but you won’t be able to see them.
I work almost exclusively with photographs. I’m not much of an artist otherwise, so I’m happy to have some kind of a creative outlet. I don’t know how much you have worked with photographs using Photoshop Elements, but if I go in and make some changes to brightness or contrast or hue/saturation or whatever, and then find later on that I need to make those adjustments again, everything starts from the default base value of 0 again. However, if I use adjustment layers to make those same changes, I can always double-click on the layer in the pallette and I can see and modify the values that were previously set. Also, if I get into a typical photograph editing section I find I have a lot of added control if I can adjust each layer as I see how that adjustment interacts with other adjustments.
I have a suggestion for you. Open a photograph and instead of just starting to make changes to it, add adjustment layers for levels, hue/saturation, brightness/contrast, etc., and just get a feel for the additional control you have. You can save it to a different filename so that you don’t do anything to your original picture. I think you’ll find, as I did, that adjustment layers are particularly valuable.
I usually start by creating a duplicate player. This protects my original image so that I can always go back to that point. Then, as I add additional adjustment layers they will be named like "brightness/contrast 1". Layer 0 just indicates that it is the base or bottom layer. The way you create new layers is by using the layer option on your menu bar. You will find options there for adding a duplicate layer as well as different types of adjustment layers.
