I use Brightness/Contrast adjustment personally. Most of the time I'm not very satisfied with the automatic corrections.

you can´t stop the improvement...

Paint Shop Pro X has one thing missing compared to the 9 (that I use) : they removed the "automatic contrast enhancement", and aded a "clarify" feature that does not work as good as the old one for dark movie captures

personally I use MPC for capturing and Corel Paint Shop Pro X for everything else reliable and good

Ok, thanks everyone. I try this weekend to get things work right. Have some interesting stuff waiting.

Yes, but I am not sure that it is easy to resize picture to the good aspect ratio if needed.
And as you can't select the compression ratio, it is a little annoying.

Few good free image programs :
www.getpaint.net
www.photofiltre.com
www.xnview.com
www.irfanview.com

Yes Media Player Classic is free. And not hard to understand. I use it, it's a proof...

Can you do that also with the normal paint that comes with the win package? (haven't tried yet)

Is Media Player Classic free ?

Can you recommend a good image program ?

I'm not especially talented at computer stuff

Using Word is probably the most strange system Why not paste them directly in an image program ?

To do the captures I use Media Player Classic, I save to BMP.
Then with Paint Shop Pro I cut black borders and resize picture if needed, and then I convert to JPEG. There are also freeware programs that can do that.