[stover]

hey all i just bought a T3i from a friend, i used to have a canon rebel XS but i never got serious with it so i might as well have been using my cell phone, now i want to buckle down and learn to use all the cameras features and be capable of producing pictures worthy of showing off, so where do i start?

ive done some reading and see i should be shooting with my camera set to save as RAW photos, any other quick tips?

ive also been told i need a program to edit the photos to get the true potential out of them, is there a free software i can download/pickup to get me started?

thanks guys and gals!