If you talk to an image pro, they'll tell you that Photoshop is the number one image editing software. They're right, but are you prepared to shell out hundreds of bucks and spend hundreds of hours learning to use the damned thing? Paintshop Pro has over 95% of the features at a fraction of the cost and learning curve. The big advantage of this software is that it comes with a couple of easy-to-use tools designed to improve your images.
The most significant tool in their Enhance Photo collection is the One Step Photo Fix. Take a look at this:
Here's my orginal photo, so dark as to be unusable.
Horribly underexposed image
But wait ... I ran it through One Step Photo Fix and ...
Whoa! There's a picture there!
Not totally satisfied, I ran it again.
Ahh, much better
I might stop there, but for the purpose of demonstration, I ran another script to remove noise (you might know it as grain in the analog world}.
Much smoother
For fun I ran another script called Edge Preserving Smooth, but the difference was subtle.
Just a bit smoother
There are other one-step tools enabling you to do plenty of things, but the One Step Photo Fix is worth the price of the software (a hundred bucks or less if you shop around). You can download a 60-day trial version to see if it'll work for you.