For free image manipulation software, you'll find it hard to beat Serif PhotoPlus 6:
http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/software/Phot oPlus/default.asp
I've never really found much need for 'album' software. (I'm happy just to store my pictures in different folders). But if you want an excellent product for organising your pictures (which will also enable you to do some basic image manipulation), try Photoshop Album Starter Edition 3.2:
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopalbum/s tarter.html
If you think that you might want to share some of your photo albums with others online (as well as viewing them on your PC), JAlbum is also popular:
http://jalbum.net/
Other popular free programs for viewing, manipulating and organising pictures include IrfanView (which is a superb viewing program which incorporates image manipulation, compression and conversion facilities) :
http://www.irfanview.com/
GIMP (which takes some time to get used to but offers many of the same facilities as the full versions of Photoshop):
http://www.gimp.org/
and Picasa (Google's excellent picture organising software, which integrates well with their online picture sharing service):
http://picasa.google.com/
Chris