I have experience with numerous versions of Photoshop but without a doubt for good effects and shear ease of use I would recommend Google's Picasa software which is free to download and use, it's a bit like a photo manger but let's you do so much more, it's so easy Adrian even you will feel like a wizard working witchcraft on these computer-thingies It has superb effects that go on with just one click, and it has a nice feature of when you Save (apply) the effect to the photo it always keeps a hidden copy of your original so in the future you can revert back to the original and see that if you want to.
There's tons of other features I love using Picasa for, I don't have time atm to cover it all but I can say it's well worth checking out! Makes backing up photos online a breeze to.