Replacement for Photoshop Elements?

I know what you mean about being used to software that you love and want to keep using. It sounds like you are still able to use it, so you must be relieved. There are times when it pays to ignore warning messages.

I still like a very old Microsoft program (Digital Image Suite) .. I figured out how to install it on my Windows 11 computers! LOL I still hang on to it.

I do use Lightroom from my iPhone and other programs to do a lot of things, but I still return to DIS. I wish they had never discontinued that program!

GIMP is free, open source, but also has a lot of quirks and a learning curve many find hard coming from the Photoshop environment. I'm servicable with it, but it's not my preferred application.

I'd cast my vote for Affinity Photo as the closest replacement that you only have to buy once and doesn't try to charge you an arm and a leg and a kidney and your first born... every few years. I also like krita.org/en/ krita, but it's more art focused than photo editing. It's also free and open source, which is a plus. No bar to entry.

I do have my quibbles with Affinity. The shortcuts take a bunch of re-configuring to get aligned with what my muscle memory says the various tools should be mapped to (that's a 'me' problem though).

The zoom works a bit differently, the selection tools are kludgey when it comes to anti-aliasing, it doesn't destructively crop, you can't pull a second document apart from the interface to work side-by-side, and layers lack transparency lock, it has to be manually toggled on the tool. There's no pixel tiling options with a brush or otherwise, its export/save could be better. It's lacking in a lot of the small things Photoshop makes you take for granted, but it's still better than getting reamed in the pocketbook monthly by Adobe's thugs.