Photoshop works great with RAW files, however I never edit my RAW files, but keep them safe in an archive. I extract a .JPG and edit that, instead. A quick way to extract a .JPG from your RAW file would be to load up an image, lets say IMG0001.RAW (we're using RAW as an example), now click File and select Save As. When the dialog box opens, select your image's destination, and select Format from the drop-down menu. In this case, you'll be selecting .JPG, which will look like: JPEG ( *.JPG, *.JPEG *.JPE) in the line, so then you'll be saving IMG0001.jpg to your folder. Leave the name unchanged in the File Name area, you can change it later. Click OK when you're ready. You will encounter a dialog box that says JPEG Options, I leave the Matte at None, select the highest quality in Image Options (slider to 12 and Maximum selected), the rest I leave untouched. Then click OK and your done!
Using Photoshop like this also saves the image's XIF data that's embedded in it. The XIF data has information like what camera was used, which lense, the date time it was taken, and so on.
As far as the buttons go, I really can't help you there, since I use a Pentax K100D. Hopefully one of the guys has the same camera as you, and can give you a hand with that.