Photo Editing Software

There comes a stage when you may want to take the next step and wish to do some more editing of your photos beyond the basics of in house software.

"What Photo Editing Software Should I Use?"  This is I often a question I get asked and it is not an easy question to answer as there are many options and degrees of ability & interest. I have listed some below with their pros & cons. Some I have used & some I have not.
If you shoot in RAW format, to take advantage its benefits you will need to use some sort of software, either the one the camera provides or a 3rd party one. Also, you will need to convert your RAW photo to JPeg to be able to send or use it elsewhere.
Layers 
I have used the term 'layers' below. Having the ability to work on your images in layers means you have the ability to make copy of a section of your image and make adjustments to that layer without it effecting the rest of the image. When you finish your editing, you can compress your layers back down to one again. This can be very useful.

Adobe Photoshop is the most well known one. It is a very capable and large programme designed for graphic artists and photographers. Most photographers would only know how to use a portion of it, nor would they need to know & use more. This is only available on subscription so if you stop paying it, you no longer have the software on your computer.
Adobe Lightroom: Made for photographers and has the photographic features of Photoshop. Usually you get Lightroom & Photoshop together on subscription, but you can get it separately. It does not have the ability to work in layers, so you would need to use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements (see below) as well.

When Adobe went to a subscription-based system, there were several programmes that were developed to fill the void.

Medium Priced - around mid $300's

ON 1 Photo RAW. This does similar things to Lightroom but also has the ability to make separate layers. It is a very capable programme and relatively simple to use. You own the software. If you want updates you can buy them.

Low Priced - around $100
Photoshop Elements: A cut down version of Photoshop that is more suitable for most non professional photographers. You can buy this outright and you then own it. It is simpler to learn to use than Photoshop and does have the ability to work in layers.
Luminar 3 recently announced and looks easy to use and very capable. It includes the ability to make layers
Affinity Photo - reportedly quite capable (I haven't looked into this one).

Low Priced or Free     0 - $50
These usually have good basic abilities without the detail of the others

Corel After Shot Pro - simple to use. A reasonable start to editing
Fast Stone Image Viewer - Free. simple to use.
Fast Stone Image Resizer - good for batch resizing and renaming. All the larger programmes would have these features built in

There are more programmes available than listed here. Think about what you want to do with your editing and how much you wish to spend. Look up the ones that interest you, watch some tutorials and read the reviews. Then you just need to try one and see how you like it.