Your photos will look their best if you optimize them with some good image editing software.

Short list:
Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac
Photoshop Elements 7 for PC
Adobe Photoshop CS/CS2/CS3/CS4

For editing your photos, it is hard to beat Photoshop Elements and Photoshop, both from Adobe. . . .

Photosohop Elements is one of the best of the mid-priced (about $100) image editing software programs. It is the “lite” version of Photoshop. I use it regularly. Version 7 is the latest for PC and version 6 for the Mac. Elements will give the you many of the basic features and tools of Photoshop and provides all of the image editing features that most photographers need.

The latest versions of elements are color space aware. This is a big plus since working in the Adobe RGB (1998) color space is better for many purposes than the sRGB color space. The latest versions of elements come with Adobe Bridge so you can batch handle files, including renaming files, batch adding your copyright notice to the exif data, and exporting the cache when burning to CD or DVD. If you ever decide to move yup to the full version of Photoshop, the learning curve will be a little easier.

Adobe Photoshop is the most popular software among professionals. It is arguably the best software available. It can do amazing things. When I need the more advanced features that Elements doesn’t have, I use Photoshop. I upgraded from CS to CS3 a year sgo. CS4 is the latest version but I have never felt the need to get every upgrasde. The only kicker to getting Photoshop? The price tag.

Read more about Elements and Photoshop here.