Many thanks all for the recomendations, gues what I will be doing this weekend!
Oh no, I think I have to do the lawn too! The work never ends. soem time for PSE as well though in my case I hope!

Not much help on using curves but there is a free plug-in which gives you a "proper" curves control rather than the color curves sliders which elements uses.
http://free.pages.at/easyfilter/curves.html