What is a good program to use for creating your own jpegs, animated gifs, etc.?

Trying to create a few buttons and banners for my website.What is a good program to use for creating your own jpegs, animated gifs, etc.?
Most people would recommend Adobe Photoshop and/or ImageReady. You can always download a trial version somewhere.What is a good program to use for creating your own jpegs, animated gifs, etc.?
There's a free website called cooltext.com that makes banners and buttons.

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