RenderMonkey will be the best tool to learn how to write GLSL shaders and what is needed to supply to the shader from your application.
GPUPerfStudio will help you inspect the shaders, textures, and render state in other openGL applications to understand how they achieve the effects they are using.
There are also numerous tutorials online and books availble if you need assistance actually writing the code to do what you want. The OpenGL Specifications are very useful, but you need to read them carefully.
