I agree, the program that comes with your camera is great until you figure out what you find as its shortcomings for what you want to do with your photos.

I would suggest trying a few free trials to see what will work best for you. Many people love and swear by Lightroom as being the best for them. I purchased Lightroom 3 but could never quite get the hang of it and didn't move on to Lightroom 4. I mostly use photoshop and camera RAW with a number of plug-ins (OnOne, NIK). I don't do any major batch processing and it works great for my style of processing.

A couple of free trials that I would suggest that are inexpensive if you decide to purchase is DxO Optics Pro 8 which is on sale right now until the end of the month. I only have version 7 but it looks like they made some very nice improvements with the newer version.

Also, OnOne has a fantastic Suite 7 that I use and their customer support is fantastic! It comes as a standalone program or as a plugin.

Again, work with DPP for awhile, find out what your style and workflow of processing is and try a few freebies that are out there before purchasing.

Good Luck!

Denise