For general image management and editing, we use Adobe Photoshop Elements, which has a rich feature set, is reasonably priced and is not too complex to learn to use. This is the software that we use for our Level 1: Beginners and Improvers courses
For end to end lifecycle managing and manipulating RAW images we think Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is the best. This is what we use for our Level 2: inspiring creativity courses
You can choose these from our Amazon shop window and also find links to some useful and inspirational books and some great gear.
Other software that we use includes:
Photomatix Pro from HDRsoft for HDR processing. You can buy this online, or download a trial version from http://www.hdrsoft.com/
Noiseware for noise reduction from Imagenomic. You can download a trial version or buy online at http://www.imagenomic.com/