Photographers of old — Henri Cartier-Bresson comes to mind — composed their photos in their Leicas’ viewfinders. This is the way they saw the world, and while it was possible and sometimes necessary to make modest changes to a print in the darkroom, their artistry was in capturing a moment. They had a good eye for the unusual as well as the mundane. Did Robert Capa mess with his iconic photo of a soldier being shot during the Spanish Civil War? False rumors about the authenticity of the photo aside, hardly.

It would have been unthinkable to remove a person captured by the lens or shift the person from one corner of the print to another. Their work was honest and pure. It was all technique and timing and rolls of film that had to be replaced in the field.

Fast forward to the world of Photoshop. While photo editors forbid blatant tampering with a digital image, there is no end to the effects that can be applied to fix errors in the field.

I have been using Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 for several years. It was affordable, compared to the full version of Photoshop, and did everything I asked of it, with dozens of tools for retouching photos. I always felt a little guilty when I was using it, even for family snapshots from various digital cameras. I had pretty much mastered it, when I received an offer to upgrade to Elements 12 for $49, half the price of the retail version.

Learning curves make me nervous, but I needn’t have worried. This version of Elements has three levels: “quick” for folks who just want to enhance their photos without learning much about the how and why; “guided” for shooters who want to learn how to use the program; and “expert” for photographers who want to use the full power of this junior version of Photoshop and know how to use it. Make no mistake, just as the “quick” mode fixes everything from exposure to color saturation, the “expert” mode will do just about everything that can be done with a photo, including moving subjects closer together and putting layers of adjustments and even other photos on top of the original shot.

As with previous versions of Elements, you start with an organizer that imports photos from a memory card or directly from a camera. Photos can be organized by date, meaning the latest photo shoot will be shown at the bottom of previous shoots. That done, the photo editor component can be called up to do some serious editing. Photos that are too dark can be lightened. If you don’t want to mess with color tools, the “smart fix” will do all the work. Photos can be cropped, re-composed, and if a subject is in the wrong place, he can be moved closer to the rest of the group. This is where editing gets dicey. But as long as you’re not doing it for publication, the guilt trip might be a little less.

There are other tools that will produce vignettes, blur backgrounds and even extend a photo beyond its original image. I was able to extend a background and an image to fit an 8 by 10 photo paper with nary a clue that it was done.

And did I mention that you can get rid of red eye, especially for pets that look like deers caught in headlights?

Previous versions’ features are back in the latest version. Photo cards, calendars and picture books are clicks away. Photos can be synched to share in tablets, smartphones and PCs. You can even turn a photo into a puzzle.

Aside from sharing photos on social media, you can print them and even use any number of outside services such as the one Costco provides to turn photos into canvas prints. I have several canvas prints hanging on my photo wall and they look terrific. Costco has serious discounts on their canvas prints occasionally — 11 by 14s can be had for as little as $20.

I don’t pretend to be in the same league as Capa or Cartier-Bresson, but I like taking pictures, both posed and candid. When I mess up during a shoot, Photoshop Elements comes to the rescue, making good pictures a bit better. Almost without the guilt trip.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 is available for both Windows and Mac PCs. It costs $99, but can be had for about $65 from Amazon. The upgrade costs $49.