Adobe recently announced it's beta version of Adobe Photoshop Express. This FREE flash based application has a look and feel very similar to it's bigger and more expensive brother, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. For basic photo editing chores such as; exposure correction, red eye removal, image cropping, and simple touch ups, this software might be all you will ever need. For more advanced editing that requires layers, masking, and other professional tools, you will still need to plunk down some greenbacks for the industry standard Photoshop CS3.
Cool features like it's slide show function, that resembles Apple's "cover flow", makes watching the content of your photo albums much more enjoyable. It can be viewed in either standard 2D or in pseudo 3D.
The main thing missing from Photoshop Express is it's inability to resize the pixel resolution and consequently reduce the file size of your photos that you wish to email. This would make sending your friends and family a copy of your latest pix much easier than having them download a large 1 or 2MB file.
Picassa, a FREE little iPhoto like application has been around for quite awhile and has a loyal user base, appears to be the only competition against Adobe's latest creation.
Pros: Elegant Interface, Photo Cataloging, 3D Slide Show.
Cons: No Image Resizing.
Price: FREE!