Tony Cooper
If he (Eric) is going to forego Lab Mode, he might as well use Elements. It's less than Lightroom and has sufficient editing tools.

He's made no mention of needing/wanting photo inventory control and the keyword feature, and that's the only significant advantage LR has over Elements, and Elements has some tools not found in LR.

Savageduck
...and LR has many features not found in Elements including the ACR8 engine and a very logical and smooth workflow.

Again, we are faced with opinions and personal preferences. Personally I have discovered a need for Lab mode (yet), for now I have all I need in RGB.

I have become quite comfortable working with LR and I can get 90% of what I need done with it. I know PSE is up to PSE11 now, but I have a copy of PSE9 and while one can certainly get most of what can be done in PS done in PSE, I am not particularly comfortable using the PSE UI. It is different enough from PS that I would only use it out of desperation. Also the crippled version of ACR found in PSE is not the same as ACR8 found in PS CC or LR5. For the Mac owner (that is the position I have to take here) that if pushed, I believe I would chose the Mac app, "Pixelmator" over PSE. For $30 it is a bargain, unfortunately, not available for Windows. < http://www.pixelmator.com >

I cannot say which would be best for a Windows machine as an alternative to Photoshop and/or Lightroom if I had to choose between a Corel product or PSE. That might be where PSE would get my vote.