Joe -

Although I've previously lavished effusive praise on Photoshop Elements, I've been exceedingly disappointed with the latest versions.

In a process somewhat similar to the dummification of Office, they've splattered illegible icons all over the thing, renamed simple procedures to incomprehensible blather, and apparently have simply disabled many of the functions I found most useful in earlier versions.

When Vista objected to my PSE-2 I bought PSE-9, but decided it was too buggered to be useful, so I put up with occasional balks and burps and stayed with ver 2.

When Win7 refused even to open PSE-2 without Administrator approval, I bit the bullet again and got PSE-10. If anything it's even worse than ver 9.

I'm back to using PSE-2 on Win7, opening the program to "run as administrator." I can't open a file in it by double-clicking, even if the program is already running, since it requires separate Admin permission to access the program and then again to open the file, and it doesn't know how to ask twice. If the program is running, I can right click and "Open Using" but only one file at a time. With the program open, however, I can use the "Browser" in PSE-2 to open (simultaneously) as many files as I want. (I fairly frequently want 100+ files open at a time, for reasons most people aren't likely to find.) The browser still exists in PSE 9 & 10, but so far as I've been able to find, it only allows you to browse files that you've allowed it to "catalog" in phony locations with no resemblance to where I put them and intend to keep them.

When I get time, I'll take another look at Irfanview, I guess.

But in answer to your question, the closest you've got in PSE (in any version so far as I know) is careful use of the clone stamp. (It sometimes gives better results if you set opacity back to around 30% and clone three times, instead of trying to do it in one shot. And you can add a little appropriate blur to cover up the rough edges.)

John