I've always been a fan of Paint Shop Pro, but Corel hasn't done it any favours.
PSP X is very good IMO, but PSP XI is still buggy and I wouldn't recommend it. Although it can read and process RAW files, it's very clunky and I'm still searching for the perfect RAW converter to replace Rawshooter Premium. At the moment I'm using Adobe Lightroom beta, and the release version should be out in the next two or three weeks. I think that Adobe's goal is for LR eventually to include everything needed by most photographers, so second stage processing isn't needed, but version 1.0 is going to be a long way off that.