Either Adobe Photoshop Elements or Corel Paint Shop Pro would be a good place to start. Both are inexpensive and aimed at people with little or no experience in image processing. Photoshop is so vast that it is intimidating to someone just starting out, but the standard application for more advanced photographers. Both work fine for posting online, and even if just using the automated controls, will perk up almost every shot. As you learn, you can use more and more of the manual adjustments to fine tune your interpretation of your images.

The better you become at image processing, the better your prints will be. No need to rush into getting a printer until you feel your skills are ready. Canon, HP and Epson all make excellent photo printers. I just checked the Epson web-site, and their photo printers start at $60US and go on up to $16,000. The low end model prints only to letter-size, but does a very nice job. It takes a fairly large room and a computer loaded with RAM to use the top-end, so don't even think about it.

Once you wear out the under $100 printer, there are high-end consumer printers quite capable of producing salable fine-art prints of the highest quality. They range in price from about $300 to $750. By the time you have the skills to make one of these worthwhile, the lineup will have probably changed, with printers of even greater capability, at somewhat lower prices. These print to 13" wide, and the prints may last for centuries. These are not general purpose printers, but specifically photo equipment. They are designed to print on fine-art papers - not do correspondence and billing on office bond paper.

When you get to the point of starting to print, if the print looks like what you see on the screen, and is satisfactory, then you can put off colour management for a while. If it is dark or light, or has a colour cast, then colour management is called for. If you have an elderly monitor, colour management will be called for sooner rather than later. I have found that high-end monitors tend to be very close to accurate when new. Colour management packages with both hardware and software start at well under $100US.

Ink and photo papers can seem expensive, but with good digital darkroom skills, you rarely need to make a second print to get it right. In the days of traditional darkrooms, making a portfolio print could take a day or two and the consumption of a whole box of colour paper and use of expensive chemistry. With the digital darkroom, even a snapshot-sized print that I run off to give to a friend is of equal or better quality to the best in my portfolio, and the first print is always perfect - thus cost is minimal. With film and a one hour lab, you get shoe-boxes full of prints. Doing the printing yourself, you only print the very best.

If you have a legacy collection of slides, negatives and prints, a scanner at under $600 will give you remarkably high quality scans and superb prints from them. Again, far superior to the traditional fume-room, both in quality and working conditions.

Start with the software, and spend the time honing your working skills with it. When you are getting satisfactory results, get one of the under $100 photo printers. Wear it out, and if you are enthusiastic, go for a 13" printer. A scanner capable of film and reflection scanning will round out your digital darkroom, if digital access to your film images is important.

Take it a step at a time - wait to buy each item until you are ready to use it. Both hardware and software are constantly improving, without the price going up. No point in buying something that will be old-technology by the time you are ready to use it. Contemporary software and hardware are capable of yielding superb results - but it takes learning and practice. Your skills count far more than either now.