melphoto60

I have the following photo editing software:
DPP came free with my canon 40D use this one alot

Picassa free dont or havent used this one much anymore

Lightzone free but can upgrade for $ has non-districtive raw file editing makes small jpg file, use this when I send emails account dont have to resize as files are 148-300 kb depending on how much editing is involved uses sliders. I really like this one not much of a learning curve.

Photoshop CS5

friday photo school by will crockett has a free video you can watch online goes thru picassa, another one that cost aprox $40-70$ and photoshop or lightroom and shows what each is capable of doing...

tcgibsonfmly

I have found Top 10 Reviews to be a good place to start. The website for photo editing is http://photo-editing-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

Sensei

I use Picasa as asset management software and for the convenience of email and other built in features. I usually do the editing in Elements
Most of my photos go on an auction sight and are only around for a few days. So they are cheap and dirty. I suppose that goes with having to take several hundred photos under less than ideal conditions with time constraints. One reason I went to editing outside of Picaa was that while I could send the photos to a lab and find the changes intact. Uploading to a web site lost the edits. If I open a photo edited in Picasa with Elements the edits are also gone. Picasa is a good free program and the combination with Elements works for me. While I found Photo Shop too much for my needs, and certainly not worth the time or money.

MWojton Loc: Yardley, PA

Thanks everyone for giving me many opinions and options.
Y'all know more than me.
And, Pete, I know I checked my software that came with the camera but i will look again more closely. It make sense that if the camera can shoot RAW images, the software that came with it should be able to edit them

Thanks again

wlgoode Loc: Globe, AZ

Also free and powerful-Fotoxx, with a somewhat shorter learning curve than GIMP or PS. BY the way if you have any experience with Photoshop, there is a GIMP variant called GIMPSHOP which is set up similar to Photoshop (haven't used but reviews seem pretty good).