Which slr camera should I buy for taking photos mainly of people? Also software for manipulating photos?

Here's an answer I gave with to someone who had a similar question -

Try Fuji, Panasonic, Olympus, Sony in addition to Canon and Nikon. They're all good brands. You should also think about size, weight and ergonomics.

To be more objective go to this comparison site -

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/compare.asp

All you need to do is plug in what you want, and it gives you a comparison of different models. Don't worry if you don't know what the question means, just skip it and move on to the next question.

Then go to Amazon and do a search for the models you like and read the reviews.

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Try these free paint/editing programs -

desktop programs -

Google Picasa

http://picasa.google.com/index-new.html

Gimp

http://www.gimp.org/

Paint

http://www.getpaint.net/

online -

Adobe Photoshop Express

https://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html

I'm a huge Canon fan, so I want to recommend an EOS 350D or a EOS 400D. It depends a lot on how much you're willing to spend. The 350D is an 'older' model, so you could perhaps pick one up on eBay for a little less. They're compact, but still have all the fundamental features of a quality SLR.

I have a 400D myself - if you're new to SLRs it's a very good model to start with. It's easy to use if you're a beginner, but has more complex settings if you're interested. It comes with limited software, but again, depending on how much photomanipulation you want to do, you'll have to pay more for more! Photoshop is the standard, and Elements 5.0 would be fine for editing family snaps, but there are many less expensive packages available.

You will want an SLR of about 5-10 megapixels and a decent 18-50 zoom. A cheap Canon would be OK for this. Adobe have some free image manipulation software that runs in your browser, search for Adobe Express.