I'm relatively new to photography and shoot with a Leica V-LUX l and love it. For what little post processing I do I start with Vista's, Windows Photo Gallery to select or delete photos. Then, I crop and adjust Exposure settings. I then use a combination of Helicon Filter first and if needed I sometimes use Paint Shop Pro Xl, but not very often. I have been using these programs for about a year and they seem to fit my needs without over spending.
I really like the Helicon Filter because it's easy to use and has a retouching feature that lets me paint selected parts of the photo to remove noise, brighten/darken, change saturation, color, sharpen, remove aberrations, clone out objects and a distortion program that I have never used. I normally Resize, Remove noise, Sharpen/Blur, if needed, and lightn/darken a photo. I'm challenged when it comes to computers and Helicon Filter is pretty much, selfexplanatory. Very seldom do I then use PSP Xl but it's nice to have and sometimes there is something I might use it for that Helicon Filter does not do. After going crazy with post processing for a while I finally found out that less is more when it comes to post processing my photos.
DonR.
http://www.zoto.com/dsr1/albums