PT Photo Editor isn't really... It's at its best as a tool to quickly process images, making broad stroke adjustments to photos fresh out of your camera, & yes it does do raw. It is not a cataloger. It is not an image or photo editor -- it just doesn't have those functions you'd expect, even in more entry level software. But it does very well as a quick pre-processor, especially if you're working with raw & intend to edit in an app that won't accept raw images. If you were on a tight budget & couldn't afford Lightroom, it's worth the asking price of $30. Saying that I have to immediately add a disclaimer -- this is not Lightroom by any stretch, which isn't a slight of any sort given Lightroom's usual $100+ pricing.
Now to the software itself, you have a photo browser across the bottom, but it only shows a folder at a time. You can only open one image at a time. You start out in Global Edit [check the upper right of the program window], where you'll see all the [what I call] broad stroke tools along the right, with your history & an *informational only* histogram on the left. At the top of your tools on the right is the Navigator. Below that are your basic tools, flip right/left, & horiz/vert, crop, a very basic straighten tool, red eye, a blemish tool, & finally the clone tool. The blemish tool gives you 2 circles when you click -- drag one to place it where you want to correct the image, drag the other to set the source of the repair -- it'll take what's in the source & blend it into the area you're repairing. The clone tool works like most clone tools, though you're not told to Control + Click to set the source until you click on the photo for the 1st time.
Below that is your collapsible Basic tool dialog where you set white balance, exposure etc. -- click the eyedropper on what you want to be white in your image & it'll make auto white balance adjustments. A common theme in all of these dialogs is double click a slider to reset -- there's also reset & save buttons on the lower right.
Next down, Levels work 2 ways -- you have the sliders or you can put your cursor over the level's histogram display... As you move the cursor right - left you'll see different regions shaded -- drag right - left and you'll adjust that region. Unfortunately you cannot adjust levels for RGB separately, & there are no eyedroppers here either.
The good news is the curves dialog [below levels] isn't bad -- the bad news is hardly anyone is comfortable at 1st working with curves. Across the bottom of the curves histogram left to right = dark to light colors. Bottom to top = dark to light luminance or brightness. If you find the color you want to change on the bottom, move straight up to the diagonal line, click once, & move that new point up to make that color brighter [like turning up a dimmer switch], down to make it less bright. The reason for the diagonal line is to smooth things out, so you actually effect colors a bit to the left & right of your point -- you limit that by setting pairs of points to act as anchors. You can get rid of a point by dragging it off, or you've got your history, or you've got your reset button. Above the histogram you select the color channel, or all three. Now a neat part... click the eyedropper, move it over the area of your image you want to adjust, & click & drag up/down -- watch the new point you just added & how the line moves up/down at that point accordingly.
The color dialog lets you set the Hue [color], Saturation [the amount of it (color)], & Luminance [think B&W photo -- the actual light & dark making up the image before any color's added]. The neat part here is again the eyedropper -- click & drag up/down & you effect all the relevant sliders proportionally. Not sure what colors make up brown wood furniture? Click & drag watching the red & orange sliders move.
Finally comes the Details dialog where you set Sharpening & Noise Reduction. The only thing to note here is the squarish icon at the upper left -- click your photo & where you clicked shows up in the dialog's magnified view.
Moving to Regional Edit from Global [remember, upper right], you get your selection tools, such as they are. This is one place it's clear that PT Photo Editor is more for broad strokes vs. finer detail editing. You select a region of your image & apply adjustments to either the part that's selected or the part outside your selection. Gradient would be cool but there's no radial, & it's buggy -- after clearing a selection click the gradient tool again to make the mask go away. Nor does it work to create a linear gradient going from dark to light to dark.
The idea is to apply a gradient mask to the parts of your image that are too dark [or too light] for example, then adjust -- if the sky was blown out you'd drag the gradient tool top to bottom, then use the controls to darken it without effecting the ground or trees etc. A radial gradient lets you do the same thing for flash photos or all sorts of sharpening/blurring effects or when your subject is backlit & too dark etc. You can use the lasso tool, where you can set the feathering to give you a softer, gradual edge, but that's a bit more work compared to a quick click/drag.
TO be clear, if you can, buy & use Lightroom -- if you can't, then PT Photo Editor can work as a quick, pre-processor instead. It lets you do the broad stroke editing & adjusting that may be all you need -- especially if you're shooting raw -- but also provides a decent starting point for regular editing software, where this sort of broad stroke editing usually takes [sometimes a lot] longer.
For comparison, FWIW of course, Raw to Lightroom to P/Shop & back, as long as you keep your original raw photo, it's still accessible, & changing your original settings on that raw file in Lightroom will update the photo as you worked [or work] on it in P/Shop. Edit a raw file in PT Photo Editor, export a .tif, & if you want to change that .tif file you have to open the raw image in PT Photo Editor again, make your new adjustments, then export another .tif. The end results may well be the same, or close anyway, but you get the point of how/why the Adobe way is faster. Now whether that [among other features] is worth the subscription to Creative Cloud or not is up to you.
[Note: someone in the comments mentioned the old version of P/Shop for free... Adobe amended their licensing for those free versions, so it's probably not legal if you don't own the license for that version. It also is not designed for win7 or 64 bit.]