In reply to k_os: thanks all for your replies . Sorry for lack of info in op and I suppose it's a bit misleading. My eldest sprog who i is 12 has a Nikon d40 (£80 off ebay ) and my mum and sister just got him a macro lens for Christmas . As has been hinted at he is pretty tech savvy and will no doubt get his head around photo shop or similar when he decides to spend some of his money on it . He's also just been given a pc with Windows 8,1 ( see my other post re this ) . an example of what he would like to do would be to take a picture of a fly and then crop and enlarge its eye and mess about with the image .I don't really want to start messing around too much with the pc but may have to . For the moment though he would like to download some software to get going. To be honest I would happily pay for something for him but photo shop seems a bit pricey and may (?) be a bit over the top to start with . Also I plan to get a Mac by the middle of next year and will be happier to pay for software for this .
For .jpegs have a look at Photoscape - very easy to use and though it does not have as many features as others it is still pretty good. It does have a RAW convertor but IMO it is not great.