You need to learn about digital workflow.

Here's a starter workflow for you.

1. Set your camera in RAW mode.

2. Shoot. (say you do 250 photos in a day)

3. When you get home copy your photos onto your hard disk. 

4. View the RAW files & select those you want to work on. (prob between 5-25 images)

5.Do RAWprocessing on those files: Convert, Sharpen, Crop, Clean, Noise, Levels, Colour, Sharpen, etc. Save.

6.Output - print or to web.

Now #5 is a big topic butautomation can be applied from almost total to almost none. 

Sounds like a lot of work, and it can be, but it's only a small fraction of the equivalent you need to do with film.

Here are a couple of links to get you thinking, and google can find you a bunch of others..

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/te.../process.shtml

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tu...orkflow1.shtml



Software required:

1. A decent RAW converter. (Bibble light (free)will do or Photoshop Elements.)

2. A decent editing package. (Photoshop Elements will do, or I suppose GIMP if you have no money.)

3. A decent noise reduction program. (NeatImage has a free version.)