Always. Take a formula 1 race car..if you don't know the specifics about how to race it, you will crash and die. Heck...ever notice that a manual transmission car is slightly harder to drive than an automatic, but it's always faster given the same other specs. Power=complexity.
There is always a constant trade off between power and convenience. The thing is: people who use photoshop want to be able to control every aspect of the image. Given the unbelievable power that Photoshop contains, it is incredibly easy to use. You do have to learn what you're doing, though, like anything. The Curves tool alone takes weeks to really, really get used to tweaking everything, but I made a determined effort because I've seen what it can do. Now, I can go into Curves, because of the easy to understand interface, make the tweaks I need to in usually less than a minute and drastically improve / correct the contrast, color balance and such.
One thing to realize is that nearly every photograph relies on some sort of processing. In film, it's the darkroom. I shoot straight digital, which, due to the anti-aliasing filter on the camera, requires a bit of sharpening in nearly every image. Also, tweaking the contrast and color can let you create your vision of the image. Now, definitely, the better the original photo (proper exposure, tack sharp, etc) the better it will be to work with in Photoshop. It's not a cure all, but it can make great photos truly stunning.
I've been using Photoshop since v4, about 8 years total, and I'm still learning things on a regular basis. I'd actually only say I know about 75% of the tools well, and probably less than half of what can really be done with them, and I know a LOT. There's just that much power. Even so, when I first started, I was able to use the levels tool and basic layers very easily. As I grew more experienced, I started to unlock the more powerful features of the program...I'm still learning. Lots of times I will find easier and better ways to do things I was really a slave to, but I learn and get that much better. But I can do things now that I never would have been able to do 3 years ago. In another 5 years, I'll be that much better.
Personally, the dumbed-down interface on something like Elements is exceedingly frustrating. I don't want the stuff completely automated, since every image is different, and I know a lot better than the program what I want the final image to look like. Sure, there are some things that could be a little better, but that's every program. I'm also not saying that you can't have easy to use things that do powerful things...just that if you want the control over the details, it means more complexity, more options, and more ways to do things.
Photoshop also has many different levels of the complexity. Curves can do everything that Levels can do...but levels is easier to understand. It also doesn't do the rest of what curves can do. Curves can effectively replace levels, hue/saturation, color balance, and contrast/brightness. However, you really need to know what you're doing in some respects on that. If you just want to increase contrast without delving into curves, you can just use the easier contrast adjustment. Usually the results won't be as good, but you can use it.
Also, there are about 15 different methods to sharpen an image, and they all have strengths and weaknesses. You can use the simple "sharpen" or "sharpen more" if you want, or you can take more control and use Unsharp Mask. You can also use the sharpen tool, layers with unsharp mask to create selective sharpening, high pass sharpening, luminance channel sharpening, etc, etc, all with slightly different results. You don't HAVE to know those things to sharpen an image, but they're there if you need them to get the effect you can't get with just the 'sharpen' command. Power = complexity.
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.jordansteele.com 
