dotty, when it comes to pruning, I find visuals are much better than written instructions :-) I've attached a link to a UMass video that does a pretty good job of illustrating the process, if you can overlook the somewhat distracting soundtrack.

If you do a Google search on "peach pruning", you'll turn up a number of other, written instructions - mostly from extension services - that may fill in any blanks. Sometimes these can be a bit too technical for their own good and difficult to follow.

Here is a link that might be useful: peach pruning video

Thanks Gardengal! Exactly what I needed. My tree is much the same size and raggedness as the before pic. I have one question for pruning in general: Do you cip off the tips of the branches you are keeping? I remember one gardener giving a demo and saying that clipping off the tip forces the tree to put effort into the side shoots. I noticed that the UMASS demo did not do this.

Sorry I have no peach trees so I cant help there, but I do have lots of apples, cherries, and pears. When I started pruning them I checked out books from the library and watched videos online, but I felt I could never find all of the answers to my tree issues. So now I have started taking pictures of my trees from several different angles and then going to my local nursery for advice. There are a couple fruit tree fanatics that work at the nursery and they get real excited when I come in with pictures. I often leave with more information than I could possibly remember, but my trees have been doing much better now.