I have been pursuing "advanced" amateur photography, I am ashamed to say,
for over thirty years (hey, I started in junior high!).
If I had access to a B&W darkroom I could occasionally get images to look
the way I wanted to. Color slides might occasionally turn out the way I
envisioned but color prints via most commercial processesors were
generally
a major disappointment.
All that changed with the original HP film scanner and the relatively
primitive image processing software accessible to people like me at the
time.
When Epson came out with its first photo printer, the venerable 700, the
digital revolution was in full swing at accessible price points.
However it was not until I finally understood basic Photoshop priniciples
that I could finally produce color images and color prints that reliably
resembled what I though I saw through the camera viewfinder.
I strongly urge you to obtain one of the major retail image processing
programs, I would go only with Paintshop Pro/Elements/CS3, and pursue
video
tutorials to get you started-the concepts of layers and masks is not
always
intuitive. It costs nothing but time to sit in front of your computer and
work through different ways of processing your images until you develop a
basic work flow that works for you. If you are interested in getting
images
to look something like what you envision the rewards are immense.
Regardless of the image processing program you must learn to use color
management . . .
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