What all software do I need

[demonsmasher]

I am a pc user. I have a sony a100. I do have the programe Gimp for some editing, just getting started. Do I need anything besides gimp. Been looking at lightroom, corel's photo software and corels Paint X. But like I have said I am just getting started and really don't know what all software that I really need for editing and tweeking the raw files that I will shoot. I can buy the education edutions of the software so I can get alot at good prices. Any Help with what all I need? I demoed the corels photoX software but really only saw that it had a nice tool interface that was really in every editing software like PS, Gimp and so forth just relabled for photo tweeking. I did like how
lightroom had thier stuff labled for the fstopes and brightness and so forth more in line with the terms with the camera. Any ensight great guru's of photoraghpy editing?

[Greg McCary]

Lightroom is about the best I have used. It along with PS 7 or higher is a very powerful combo. I use Lightroom to correct color and exposure and PS 7 to clone, crop and other editing.