I am not brilliant with photo editing software but i notice the three packages you have are not the easiest or most user friendly for the novice.

 Unless you get a good offer you may be better off downloading one of the free editing packages that are easier to use and working your way to the more complicated packages.

Hello Wayne

I am from Lincoln, mind you I live in North Wales now!! Lol.  However, I would suggest you buy Digital Photo magazine, it comes out every month and with it comes a DVD on photoshop techniques which you can play over and over again.

Good luck with that, all the best.

for me the easiest way to learn is google.. select videos and type 'gimp tutorial' or 'photoshop tutorial' and just follow each tutorial step by step pausing the video as you go along.. a great way to learn and you will be suprised how quickly you venture off on your own editing.

Serif and Photoshop work very similarly. GIMP is  more difficult to get to grips with. Here is my usual order of editing jpeg images.

1. Straighten the image if needed and crop it to remove the areas you don't want.

2. Duplicate the image so you are not working on the original and can always go back to it if need be.

3. With the duplicate, first check the histogram under Levels and adjust it at the left and right sides so that it leaves no gap at either end. 

4. If the result looks as though the image needs further adjustment, go to Curves and alter the shape of the curve to adjust the tones of the image. The Help pages in your editor will explain how to do this.

5. If the colours look a bit washed out or too vivid, use Hue/Saturation to improve them. You can confine the adjustment to particular colour bands, such as Reds, if only certain colours need improving.

6. If certain parts of the image look too dark or bright, use Shadows/Highlights to get a better balance.

7. If the image looks too noisy in certain areas, usually a speckled appearance in shadows, use noise reduction software to reduce it. You'll probably need a plug in if you want to do it within the editor.

That's the basics to get you started. When you make a duplicate of the original you are creating a layer. which overlies and hides the original although your editor will allow you to see the original by hiding the layer. It is often an advantage to create extra layers for each type of adjustment to make it easier to remove adjustments which you are dissatisfied with but you might be better to leave that to the time when you are more experienced at editing.  

The Help pages of you editor should explain any points which you don't understand. There's lots more to learn, such as cloning and adjusting white balance so don't expect to master everything in a few weeks. 

Other basic features you may need to use are sharpening, brightness and contrast.

There are plenty of videos and other tutorials on the interrnet which you should find hellpful and many photo mags contain articles on image editing. 

Really surprised at some of the comments here that you should start with other software, especially as you have Photoshop CS5 available. Many colleges offer short courses in Photoshop, worth investigating, meanwhile i would suggest a book such as Photoshop CS5 Essential skills available on amazon here

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Photoshop-CS5-Mark-Galer-M-Ed/dp/0240522141

Well worth a read even for non novices and full of editing lessons

thankyou everybody for your advice. I have taken it all on board. join my first club on tuesday so will see how that goes.

will keep you all updated on my progress.