I always have a problem with "experts" telling new photographers to shoot "manual". I always recommend they use whatever automation they have to first get something usable "on the card" (we used to say "in the can"). Once you have insurance then you can get creative, or corrective or whatever. In the meantime you will have something to fall back on if your creative or corrective adjustments don't work. I believe this is what this poster is saying, and I agree 100%. I also believe paying attention to composition is always critical, and sometime manual adjustments detract from capturing the best moment or composition.

I always check the focus first. PP can correct a wide range of problems, but nothing can really help a photo that's out of focus. The larger the final print, the more critical the sharpness. I have discarded many otherwise good photos that are not sharp, and don't waste much time or money trying to correct them. (Actually, if the photo otherwise showed promise I might keep it in the trash bin for a while. Never know when someone might come up with a plug-in that would help)

I personally do not like or use the organizer, but it does allow me to review a large number of photos without opening them individually in the editor. As I watch the slide show in organizer I either jot down the numbers of the ones I like enough to edit, or delete the unusable ones.

OK?

Here you go

I just Googled "digital photos for sale".. The first site to come up was "Big Stock Photo". They advertise 9 million photos for sale. I searched for "horses" and came up with 45,404. Just Arabian Horses (my speciality), 1,404. Don't give up trying to sell your photos, but just getting noticed will be difficult. Your best bet might be local arts/crafts meets where you can display your best work. I've pretty much given up actually selling anything, even the owners of the horses I've photographed won't pay, although they are very happy to take gifts. Just my experience, I'm sure others are making a little here and there

Best answer I've even seen to the RAW vs. JPEG?

If you have to ask, shoot JPEG

Don't have enough information to provide a specific answer, but here are three possibilities. If your camera is 5 megapixels or less, and conditions were not perfect (for example, too dark and your lens would be forced wide open, never a good thing) 16x20 would be pushing the upper limit. Or, if you cropped your file significantly, and still tried to print a 16x20 you might not get a good result even with a high megapixel camera. Finally, maybe it just was not focused as well as it could have been, or the camera or subject moved. Post a sample or the original if you can and we can take a look.

Your camera is producing files that are not shaped the same as the prints you are ordering. One camera I have produces an almost square image, the other a "widescreen". And this is so critical, believe it or not, a photo cropped to 5x7 will not print 4x6 without further cropping! I use Sam's club, and download the full size edited file. After downloading, the interface will offer me the full range of print sizes. If I select a print size that requires "cropping" the interface will notify me and give me the option to make the crop. If I do not make the necessary crop the machine will do it for me, and probably cut off something important. The interface will also notify me if the print size selected is too large to print well. By downloading the full size file I can return later and print a different size (after cropping of course) without another download. Be aware that i high megapixel file can take a while to download

Whoa! There is a lot going on here. Let me try to summarize. If you shoot RAW you are turning off all your in-camera processing. Settings you might have made, such as saturation, sharpness etc are disabled. The camera records only what the sensor sees, and in full detail, as a raw file, which will be 3-4 times the size of a max resolution JPEG. I rarely shoot RAW because the file size slows the camera way down, and most of the time I can create what I need with JPEG. After you download the RAW file to your PC you will have to open it in a RAW processor. Elements and other editing programs have one built in, or you can use the one that came with your camera. In the RAW file you will be able to customize the operations the camera did not perform when recording the RAW image. RAW processors have limited editing capabilities, so if you need additional editing you will have to convert the raw file to JPEG. I use Sam's club processing, and after all my editing, download the full size resulting JPEG image. After selecting the print size the Sams' Club interface will let me crop the image to suit the size selected, and tell me if the image detail will be satisfactory. By downloading the full size file I can go back later and reorder different sizes without another download. I'm sure other . printers will do the same, but Sam's is really inexpensive.

As long as I am shooting outdoors in good light, I have found my Sigma 70-300 APO DG gives very good results. My 50-200 just doesn't get me close enough. The Sigma and the similar Tamron are not too expensive. Just don't expect to shoot landscapes