Bunko.T Loc: Western Australia.

I don't have the magic wand cobber just a certain amount of experience. If that floats ya boat great. If not stiff.

MWojton Loc: Yardley, PA

Darien

I am just like you- I was very impressed with Photoscape (free). Then a few days ago I tried picmonkey and was very impressed (free). Tons of cool stuff with these programs to keep you busy for a while. However, I want to be able to do more so yesterday I "broke down" and bought Photoshop Elelments 10 for $70.

MW

rocar7 Loc: Alton, England

I agree, I use this, but also use Elements 9 occasionally, and use Lightroom 4 for the Raw converter and plugins. I have DxO Optics for correcting lens distortions, but now find that Lightroom 4 does it just as well IMHO.

jackm1943 Loc: Omaha, Nebraska

Best: PhotoShop CS5

Best value: Latest version of Elements

St3v3M Loc: 35,000 feet

...And of course the software that came with your camera

Picdude Loc: Ohio

dpullum has probably given the best advice so far at this stage. The 2 questions you really need to ask yourself right now are: 1) How much money (if any) do I have or am prepared to spend on software. 2) How much time do I have or am prepared to set aside to learn the software.

You also implied you have little to no experience with editing software. For that reason I would advise not looking at 30-day trials of lightroom, photoshop, corel or anything like that because after the 30 days are up you will, in all likelyhood, still be looking for the roadmap that shows you how to find your butt with both hands regarding the software. Free sotware at this stage is almost asuredly the way to go, and there is plenty of it.

As others have pointed out for fast, easy-to-learn software there is picasa, photoscape, picmonkey and lots of others that you can find on cnet.com, filehippo.com, snapfiles.com and other freeware sites. You can spend a few hours on any of them and figure out most of what they can do. Something like GIMP will take you considerably more time to learn but it is free, there are lots of tutorials, and many people on UHH use it daily.

But again, how much money do you want to spend, how much time do you want to expend learning. Let the good people here know that and they can help you through everything else.

Good luck and happy hunting!!!

MtnMan Loc: ID

Best deal out there is Photoshop Elements 10.

B&H has it on sale for $50.

Also get Kelby and Kloskowski's book on same, though, or it will be frustrating. It is very comprehensive.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

As a hobbyist, Smart Photo Editor is $20 and fun to play with while doing some amazing things. If you want to get serious with comprehensive capabilities as an amateur growing toward being a serious amateur, I like Corel PaintShop Pro X4 which is about $40 directly from them right now. Of course there are Adobe products which cost a bit more plus the very comprehensive Adobe PhotoShop if you have a spare few hundred dollars laying around.

Since you're new to this, I don't believe the words "never done it before" and "Adobe PhotoShop" should be in the same conversation. That would be like a teen who hasn't taken drivers training yet being thrown into a NASCAR racer and told to go 200mph while almost touching the bumper of the car ahead of him.

Learning "comprehensive" software is time consuming, just plain hard, causes lots of frustration and even anger for quite a while, and thoughts of "Why in the world did I spend that much and think I could do this?" in the user - until you reach a certain level and are no longer beating your head against a brick wall and finally understand what's going on. If you think you have that persistence and patience, go for it. Otherwise start small at $0 to $40 and either grow from there or bail out without much investment involved.

Dudley Loc: Roseburg, Oregon

If you are familiar with the 'layer concept', such as Autocad products (by Autodesk), you already have the basics down. Think CAD, or Excel (where you work in layers.)

anotherview Loc: California

Ditto: "Why not start with a simple, free program, like Picassa, and keep working your way up to the very expensive."

The full Photoshop will overwhelm you. A simpler image-editing program will introduce you to the basics. You will gradually gain the confidence to move up to an advanced image-editor.

For my part, I started with Photoshop Elements. It seemed overwhelming. I never fully learned its capabilities. But I did manage to improve my photographs in this program.

Meanwhile, one day, I read about actions, and wanted to begin using this powerful, time-saving feature. PE did not do actions. I had CS4 on the computer already, and used a Scott Kelby instruction for three kinds of image sharpening in CS4. I found myself switching from PE to CS4 to do sophisticated sharpening.

Then one day, I stayed in CS4, and never looked back. I bought the upgrade to CS5, and it knocks my socks off for all its power right at my fingertips.

Note that plenty of free instruction exists on the Internet for doing image-editing using the full Photoshop. Try the Learning tab at www.photo.net to start.

Good luck.

Cactus Amid Granite Rocks, Cahuilla Point

MtnMan Loc: ID

Maybe early versions did not support actions but a slight correction is needed now. You can EXECUTE actions with Photoshop Elements. You just can't script them.

May provide actions and add-ons you can use to supplement Elements.

But Elements also has a significant learning curve. Don't even think about trying it without the Kelby and Kloskowski book. There are other books that describe all the features and fuctions but only the K&K book gets you immediate results step by step.

After that the vast resources of videos etc. will begin to work for you.

jwstenn Loc: Maplewood, MN.

I am no professional, but I will say this, so much information out there and everyone has given great advice....I started out with some of the free ones first and decided to move up the ladder just alittle, so i baught Paintshop Pro and now I am using PPx4, many many people have looked at my photos and they think they were done by professionals..

It does what I need it to do for me, thats what I can say about it, still learning it.

anotherview Loc: California

MtnMan: I stand corrected. PE could execute actions but had to import them by a roundabout, cumbersome process. CS4 did the scripting of these actions. So after a while I made the jump to CS4, in sink-or-swim mode. I learned to swim there, and thankfully so.

View from Freedom Cafe, Palm Springs Air Museum (2012)

terrysmay

I have used Picture Window Pro for many years. It is up to version 6.0. It is very powerful, does RAW conversion, can do HDR if you want, and in my opinion is easy to use. It is fairly inexpensive. Go to dl-c.com (digital light and color)to download a trial copy.

Croce Loc: Earth

Hahahaha you are really on a tear this morning Pullam.
You need to get back to your Lysol sprayer. LOL