To be honest, I've not actually used Gimp, but a lot of people say it's a good program for basic editing. I believe it's free? so definitely worth a try.
Picassa is another freebie and ok if you don't want (or need) to do too much editing & make a lot of fine adjustments. Elements is probably the best basic editing software - it's got all the essential bits of Photoshop CS4 but without all the stuff that most people never use.
If you want to work with RAW files Lightroom is good, but I prefer Capture One.
When it comes to photo editing less is usually more
ok that's great, th