In the age of digital photography except the ‘creative exposure’ the post-production significantly affects the image quality. Adobe has created great tool for that purpose. Is there a Photographer who has not heard about Photoshop? Because I don’t interfere with the content of the pictures (I do not execute the photomontages or moving portions of images from one place to another) I only use Adobe Lightroom for post-production. I believe that it is an effective and affordable tool, which allows fine-tuning pictures in minute details, including recovery of lost details (e.g. in the overexposed parts, highlights), brightening shadows, change the tonal range, exposure, contrast, perspective and you name it. The best results are possible when using the RAW image file format (however I further convert to DNG). An interesting fact is that Lightroom leaves the digital negatives untached, while all image treatments are shown in real time in the program interface. After the final edition of the digital negatives the content can be exported, with a wide choice of options, e.g. a JPG file. I also use Adobe Lightroom for cataloging photos in folders and to create copies to print.
On Adobe website dedicated for Lightroom 
you can test a trial version. Then it is just a matter of buying it and patient education.
I recommend a book “The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 Book” by Martin Evening. This instruction manual doses the knowledge in the appropriate order. As one reads it many times returns to similar themes but including more and more details about image processing art. Additionally on the author’s website one can download the catalog of photos used in the book and experiments during familiarization with book content.
