Hi all,

As I've been reading, it appears that shooting in RAW has more benefits than shooting jpeg, so my plan is to shoot in raw and edit......however I have no idea where to begin in white balancing, color correcting, all that jazz.....

Any suggestions where to start? I have the canon raw editor software but am thinking I should take the time to learn to use photoshop.

You can edit the RAW in the either, also in Lightroom or Bridge which comes with Photoshop CS5.  Main reason you want to shoot and edit in RAW is because it retains more of the original information when the image is captured.  more detail remains in the highlights and shadows of the pics.
You can usually move the exposure settings  up or down a couple stops if you must.  Really theres no wrong way or right way, just move the sliders.  when moving down stops though make sure youre not adding revealing noise in the pic.  Lots of good tutorials on youtube.  regarding the white balance... if you use auto on white balance on your camera it works rather well. Myself i use a gray card to custom set the balance but will sometimes still make adjustments to get a cool or warm feeling in my pics.  always keeping the skin tones in mind, anything i know is white in the pic, and looking at the white of the eyes and teeth.

kelbytraining.com and lynda.com are excellent resources

for my part i'm moving more toward shooting jpeg. my workflow is faster and i get better skin tones. and i can use the highlight priority mode on my camera (5D MK II).

we use aperture to help keep things organized.

Forget about learning Photoshop right off the bat...

Get yourself a copy of Lightroom 4.2 and learn how to get the best image out of your RAW files first. The average hobbyist doesn't realize how much information is in a typical file, even one that was a bad capture. Start there and transition to Photoshop for more specific work.

Adobe has a channel on YouTube and they provide great tips.

Google is your friend.

thanks everyone....those are great suggestions.

Just a quick heads up:

Raw isn't a safety belt. Take a crappy shot in raw and it will still be a crappy shot in your raw converter. Badly under or over exposed shots will not salvageable; you'll just end up with noise when you try to correct it that you'll then have to 'denoise' and then sharpen to over come the lack of detail.

Raw however is great for being able to simple switch your white balance at the click of a button and other such task that you may have made an error with in-camera.

Think of it like this; if Jpeg is an apple pie you buy from the shops, then raw is the ingredients you buy for the apple pie and bake your self. You have more control over those individual 'ingredients' and how you combine them. 

When you shoot in Jpeg you are allowing your camera to perform a certain amount of post processing to the image. When you shoot in raw that processing is left to you. Bear in mind that usually (I'm not sure when the exception would apply) raw images will appear much softer and have less contrast than you'll be used to when you open them in your converter.

Somebody has already suggested sources on the interweb to use and you can youtube lots of raw conversion techniques.

Good luck.

Lightroom has an excellent channel on Youtube with thourough and very easy to understand tutorials by Julieanne Kost.

http://www.youtube.com/user/AdobeLightroom

With all respect...but did you try google..?
There are tons of info on Raw and LR4, as suggested Kelby and Lynda but I would prefer the videos of Julieanne Kost...a bit tough for a starter but the best to learn