Thanks Andrew.
One of the things I have been told is that Lightroom is preferred over
Aperature because it integrates with Photoshop seamlessly, whereas
Aperature requires some fiddling to get it to work with Photoshop.
I do use Mac's and and played with Aperature a little but do not have
any experience with Lightroom. I am told they are very similar.

To the group:
How much RAM does it take to get RAW to load faster?
(All my RAW images are in the 8-11 MB file size.)

Andrew-S wrote:
I generaly shoot in High JPG unless I am doing portraits, tricky exposures
or weird lighting. Then I shoot in RAW. Image noise and resolution is not
a problem as long as you are in the highest quality JPG.

As matter of fact I recently sold a 60+ inch enlargement and few smaller
ones that where shot with a borrowed EOS 5D in high JPG to a contractor.
Someone else had done a similar shoot with a Nikon D2Xs and shot their
images in RAW. In the end even though I was several hundred dollars more,
the contractor chose my images for enlargement. Quite simply I had better
colour and less noise than the Nikon shooter. To be fair about this though
I still say the Nikon system has the best flash technology of any of the
current camera systems.

It's a case by case basis for the old argument over which is better, RAW or
JPG. I have seen and encountered many situations in which RAW is the only
way to go, and many other times where JPG is best choice.

For software I would encourage you to download trial versions of:

Lightroom from Adobe,
IView Media Pro by Microsoft,

Capture One by Phase One,

and if your a Mac aficionado,

Aperture by Apple.

I have or have worked with almost all of these titles (Capture One is the
exception), and all are VERY VERY good.