if you are nikon user, then my 1st option is nikon capture, i normally shoot as raw and use nikon capture to process first, i feel the darkness enhancement function from NC is quite useful, for color tone adjustment i also prefer NC but not photoshop.
the 2nd step is import the image from NC to photoshop.
one thing i like for the photoshop CS2 is it has a big jump for distortion correction and new sharpen filter. I will also important B+W soft filter into photoshop, but not use everytime.
the rest functions for photoshop no matter which version from version 7 are the same to me.
NC provides most of the functions for editing and much less time consuming than the photoshop, if you can only select one, i suggest NC.