christo™
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1. Upgrade to PS CS, you'll get a RAW developer and full high color support in one $170 upgrade. You may want C1 later, but if you are already well familiar with PS do yourself a favor and learn the process using PS CS for RAW devel. I agree about what "lots of RAM" changing meanings: 1GB seems to be the minimum to get PS CS out of it's own way when messing about with high color photos and RAW development, and 2GB is not ridiculous.
2. Buy the book "The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers" by Scott Kelby -- the basics well laid out so you can find them again. There are other books with some different information that is good, and some of the methods in the Kelby book are a bit dated, but I think it's the best "one stop, learn most" book, and, as I said, it's laid out to make a decent reference in the future.
3. Be careful when buying a printer -- the Mac OS X support can be a pain in the neck -- be sure you get positive recommendations from Mac owners before deciding on the printer. I'm a PC user myself, but have had all kinds of problems getting printers to work with other people's OS X machines. I've heard that's getting better, but seek Mac user advice for the printer -- the Mac drivers sometimes are inferior.
4. Do look into sharpening plug-ins. I agree with dscottf that it's worth spending $100 there for a plug-in to get better results faster. I happen to mostly use Unsharp Mask Pro (www.theimagingfactory.com), but Photokit SHARPENER works great and provides a really good tutorial on what is going on with sharpening and "why sharpen, where, and for what?". Since having PS CS, I decided to buy Photokit as they updated it to support high color files, and will use it more and more. See www.pixelgenius.com.
5. Learn to custom white balance so you're JPEGs aren't useless. Get an ExpoDisc (www. expodisc.com), or rig your own coffee filter / breathing mask / panty liner version as is so popular around the Fred Miranda forum. Having something that provides a diffused neutral image covering the front of the lens while you shoot a gray frame for CWB makes CWB painless and quick.
6. If you've been working at the low zoom end of that 28-135, you're suddenly going to find you need a wider lens. That 1.6x is what threw me hardest the fastest when first getting into the 10D because suddenly all my lenses changed field of view. I'm really happy with my 16-35/2.8, but it's a bit spendy. Many people seem to like the 17-40 just fine.
7. Get a couple of decent 1GB CF cards if you're going to shoot RAW. You don't need to buy the very fastest, but don't bother with microdrives -- they're painfully slow even by 10D standards, and both of mine died in a few months of usage in the 10D. See www.robgalbraith.com for a database of which CF cards work at what speeds in the 10D.
8. Get a colorimeter or photospectrometer based package for calibrating your monitor, and buy profiles for your printer from a third party after you decide what papers you like. At your first whiff of Color Management Hell, buy the book Real World Color Management by Bruce Fraser, et al, and read the first 4-5 chapters the first chance you get.
9. Don't forget to check your ISO setting every time you pick up the camera to shoot. You won't have that film-roll selection process to keep the ISO synched, and you'll be really upset the first time you shoot a bunch of pictures at ISO 400 when you could have been shooting 200 due to the noise difference.
10. Shoot like crazy, try your best at development, and when you're puzzled, post a picture around here with the question and just ignore any flames (it's not too bad here, but there's always some clown).
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