(MONEY Magazine) – I want my love affair with my digital camera to continue, but we've developed some issues. The early days together were liberating. There are virtually no incremental costs to snapping more and more pictures, I soon realized. So I did--indiscriminately, voraciously. The results: I'd never taken so many good pictures.

But I soon found we were carrying extra baggage--namely, hundreds, even thousands, of digital-snapshot files. I was suffocating. My computer's hard drive was awash in JPEG files. And once I finally found the shots I wanted, e-mailing them to friends was laborious and often confusing. Like so many digital-camera owners, I'd quickly outgrown the software that came with my camera.

Hoping to salvage this otherwise fulfilling relationship, I tested a half-dozen of the most popular software programs that help you manage and print digital photos. My findings: Most do a fine job at getting your photos organized, making them easy to find and to view, and taking the pain out of e-mailing and printing. But some stood out--and not for silly extras like "realistic 3-D page-flipping technology" or fancy editing features that the typical amateur photographer won't need.

Instead, I liked my favorite program--Kodak EasyShare for Windows--for its striking simplicity and intuitiveness. Plus, it's free at www.kodak.com/go/easysharesoftwaredownload. The software's advantages are apparent the moment it's installed, when it automatically searches your computer for photo files and pulls them together--so no more scanning your hard drive for disparate JPEGs. It also organizes photos by date, so you can quickly locate one from, say, this past Christmas by clicking on 2002, then December, then 25. And it makes it fast and easy to label photos with keywords, attach captions, designate favorites and sort by a range of criteria.

E-mailing photos can be a hassle because you often have to compress the data in the file or resize the image to accommodate e-mail limitations. The guesswork is a pain. But EasyShare swiftly and elegantly walks you through the process, asking you merely to select Best for E-mail or Original Size; the program calculates the rest.

Another common frustration is the frequent switching between applications, from the photo viewer to e-mail and back, when you send numerous photo-laden messages. But EasyShare minimizes the toggling by storing up the e-mail and sending them all at once after you've attached all the pictures. The next upgrade, version 3.0, available in April, will be able to import e-mail addresses from Outlook Express, making the process even more seamless. Version 3.0 will also handle more photos (10,000, up from 4,000) and has built-in software for backing up photos to a CD (a must, even if you store photos at an online service), which further streamlines the process.

Kodak's free program excelled at every task I expect to perform regularly--but I must admit, I was also seduced by Adobe Photoshop Album, the new consumer version of the gold standard in professional digital-photo software, which sells for about $50. Its organizing capabilities are considerably more sophisticated. You can give each photo up to 50 subject tags, which can then be searched using what's called Boolean logic--selecting, say, Grandma, Hawaii and Disneyland will call up any photo featuring Grandma in either location. You can also speed your search by clicking on a segment along a nifty timeline that runs across the top of the screen. And if you drag a thumbnail of a beach scene, for example, to the search box, Photoshop Album will look for similar photos.

The Adobe program is good at cataloguing the short videos that many new cameras can capture. And it makes backing up more time-and space-efficient by remembering what you've previously saved, so you don't duplicate efforts. Photoshop Album does have some goofy gee-whiz features (like a 3-D gallery), but also many worthwhile editing capabilities for those looking to get more serious about their digital photos.

(Neither program is designed for Mac users--but for those people the choice is a no-brainer: Apple iPhoto, which comes with OS X.)

Okay, so your images are organized. What about printing them? Again, my favorite strategy wins for simplicity and efficiency, and has the added advantage of low overhead. The bottom line: Forget about buying a printer and instead upload your images to one of the many popular websites that professionally print your photos and send them in the mail. Ofoto.com (run by Kodak) and Shutterfly .com are both popular and well run. Also worth a look, however, is Walmart .com, which I thought was nearly as well designed and charges much less for each print--26¢ for a four-inch-by-six-inch, compared with 49¢ at Ofoto and Shutterfly. They all charge about $1.50 for shipping, though with Wal-Mart you can pick up your prints at a local store for free. Also worth noting: You can store your photos on the websites and your friends and family can view them and order prints. Ofoto and Shutterfly currently offer unlimited free storage, while Wal-Mart charges a small fee after 28 days.

Yes, with these sites you'll have to wait a few days for delivery, but you'll generally get better prints and probably save both money and time compared with making your own at home on, say, a $200 printer. Wal-Mart charges less than what the paper and ink alone will cost you. And even compared with the higher price that Ofoto charges, printing at home isn't likely to start saving you money until well after 500 prints.

Meanwhile, making eight-inch-by-10-inch prints on a home printer takes anywhere from two to 15 minutes--quality time that you and your camera could've spent together.