My recommendation is shoot raw and.....download and try a trial copy of Adobe Lightroom.
It's very powerful and the learning curve is very reasonable.
For an idea of what you can do check out
the various YouTube Lightroom tutorials by Serge Ramelli. He goes for some rather extreme results but I like the way he demonstrates the capabilities and a lot of it can be viewed for free. Then you have to buy the app to see the rest.
For the file management capabilities of Lightroom I'd recommend "The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 (or 5) Book for Digital Photographers.
by Scott Kelby
(hope you don't mind an old(er) man acting like he knows what he's talking about. I often do not)

Well bill, there are others who love to learn for the sake of learning.

They want to improve themselves and their skills and use as much information as they can gather to do so.

YOU may not find the additional information important or even enlightening... but as someone who has enjoyed photography all my life let me tell you that a healthy dose of curiosity serves to ENHANCE the experience.

Like looking at a beautiful car and wanting to know what size engine is under the hood and what the 0-60 and 1/4 time is. Or wondering how many wins a NASCAR team has over the last 6 Series. Or knowing how well a hitter does with runs on base late the game..

SOME of us enjoy and use that information. And it's REALLY easy to add to a post. Without harming a thing. ;)

As I read this thread I am a tiny bit distressed at the messages that seem to hold a whole younger generation in low regard based upon its approach to photography. I think this criticism misses something important.

The percentage of people in the world who take pictures now is vastly greater than it ever was in the past. But this vast increase in the percentage of folks making images is not about using fancy dedicated equipment. Rather, it is about people using smart phones and very simple cameras. Most of the new photographers are not interested in making great art. They are interested in making a record of themselves and of their cohort. Phone cameras work great for that purpose and more sophisticated equipment offers no important benefit in this realm.

The percentage of people in the world who are concerned about taking serious art photos has never been very large. I think that those (relatively few) who have that orientation will probably always migrate toward more capable equipment, assuming that they can afford and can understand that equipment. And even these more photographically serious folks will still enjoy good phone style cameras (or point and shoot cameras) because those are more likely to be available when folks stumble onto great photographic situations.

I have no doubt that there will always be a market for sophisticated photo equipment. The compulsion to make interesting images will grab a certain number of folks -- including some younger ones. I'm just not sure that the sophisticated equipment of the future will always have a mirror that bounces out of the way during the image capture process in the style of the old SLRs. And I am not worried about that. Why should I be?

CDs were FAR superior to LP's... but the MP3 players of today are GARBAGE. As are the current generation of "home theater" type speakers.

Along the same vein is the state of the arts, in particular, photography and music.

There are STILL people who take the time to learn to play their instruments and others who spend a large about of time practicing their vocal skills to avoid the dreaded autotune.

Granted, there WILL be some who prefer convenience of cell phones and point and shoots to take "snapshots"... but as a rule, I'm willing to bet that the next 2 generations of photographers will desire the best quality images and the equipment needed to capture them.

They will buy them and learn how to use them and drive themselves to improve their art... just like WE do.

So the DSLR industry will be just fine. ;)