Hi,
I recently saw an article in a magazine about Rawtherapee (
http://www.rawtherapee.com/ ) that you might find interesting.
If you get a DSLR and set it to save the files in RAW format (big memory card required - I think RAW files from my Canon EOS 350d 8MP are about 50MB) Rawtherapee can process them. It can apply corrections and enhancements at a detail level that is impossible with JPEG compressed images.
Cheers,
Paul.
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