Software: shaping and storing.(The New Photography)

Digital cameras and scanners invariably come with computer software that you use to enhance your photos, resize them, and prepare them for printing. But you may want to buy a separate third-party program rather than depend on the bundled software for image-editing, Many of the newest programs, we found, are better than their predecessors. Even a basic third-party editing program may have more features than the software supplied with the camera or scanner.

Features that once were reserved for professional-grade packages now appear in more-affordable products. And our tests showed that both basic and advanced programs are easy for nonprofessionals to use.

For example, some programs no longer require surgical precision to remove red eye from flash photos. A single click does it. Another feature--shown on the facing page--takes most of the effort out of removing elements from an image. Other features let you quickly reshape an image or fight an image that's askew.

There are two main types of software for digital photography. One is for editing: altering or enhancing images in …