Avid digital photographers are passionate about more than just cameras. They crave powerful tools to organize, edit, and share their pictures. Luckily, today's consumer photo software is more sophisticated than ever, and about $100 gets you a formidable arsenal.

We looked at four recently updated software packages for intermediate to advanced hobbyists (none support CMYK color for professional printing)--Adobe Photoshop Elements, Jasc Paint Shop Pro and Photo Album, Microsoft Digital Image Suite, and Ulead PhotoImpact. Then we picked the best utilities and plug-ins that do specific tasks better than the big guns.

Throughout, we've pinpointed new features and hidden tools that can help take your digital photography to a higher level.

$100

We tested a beta version of Photoshop Elements 3. The most well-rounded of the four major applicaton packages, it's our Best Buy. We liked its many pro-level Photoshop CS tools and its robust new Photo Browser, which incorporates much of Adobe's Photoshop Album product.

Photoshop Elements 2's old File Browser could catalog pictures on the hard drive and on other mounted media. But the new Photo Browser (modeled after Photoshop Album) can also catalog photos from offline media as well, these showing low-resolution thumbnails of images with little CD icons.

To find photos fast, you can search the Photo Browser by text-based metadata, by keyword, by user-defined star ratings, or by visual data. The Find by Color Similarity With Selected Photo(s) command, for example, lets you choose up to four source photos and search for other photos that share the same subject or predominant color scheme. To group similar pictures, we used the outstanding new Stack command, which proved particularly useful at stacking different edited versions (collectively called a Version Set) of the same photo. We could then call up the stack view and see thumbnail previews of all of the photos for quick side-by-side comparison.

Photoshop Elements gives you much of the power of the industry-standard Photoshop CS program but with a more consumer-friendly interface consisting of two image-editing environments: Quick Fix, for one-touch adjustments; and Standard Edit, with more-sophisticated tools borrowed from Photoshop CS. A button toggles between the two modes, allowing you to make basic edits speedily in Quick Fix and then do your fine-tuning in Standard Edit.

Two great tools that are new to Photoshop Elements 3 are the Healing Brush and a simplified version called the Spot Healing Brush. They effectively eradicate spots and blemishes by replacing them with the color and texture of the surrounding pixels for a natural-looking result. The healing brushes are easier to use than the Airbrush and Clone tools. (In Elements 3, the Airbrush is in a new location on the Brush tool's Options Bar.) Another cool tool, called Cookie Cutter, lets you crop an image to any one of a variety of custom shapes (hearts, arrows, stars, paw prints, snowflakes, and such)--perfect for creating kitschy cards or invitations.

Advanced hobbyists will appreciate the Process Multiple Files command, which lets you simultaneously rename, resize, and convert the file formats of any number of images. Plus, Photoshop Elements 3 has an outstanding light-duty adaptation of the Photoshop CameraRAW plug-in that includes a few advanced settings for functions such as sharpening, luminance smoothing, and color noise reduction. Of the four major applications here, only two--Photoshop Elements 3 and Jasc Paint Shop Pro 9 --can read and adjust RAW (unprocessed) files from a digital camera.

Photoshop Elements 3 is the best choice for making cleanly designed creations such as cards, photo album pages, and editable HTML Web photo galleries. You'll find plenty of seasonal and event themes, too. Adobe created a $150 Photoshop Elements plus Premiere Elements video editing bundle that enables you to incorporate photos and slide shows into movies burned to DVD. In addition, Adobe has teamed up with Ofoto to let you create cloth-bound printed books.

TIP Elements' Healing Brush is more effective than the Clone Brush for removing blemishes, but its default brush size is usually too small, so don't forget to increase it. To erase a big object quickly, start with the Healing Brush in Replace mode and then smooth over the unnatural edges in Normal mode.

A. Rating Stars let you rank your photos so that you can quickly find your top picks later.

B. Find by Color Similarity lets you search for pictures visually.

C. The Stack command lets you group similar pictures behind one thumbnail.