Paint Shop Pro 8
Paint Shop Photo Album 5
Animation Shop 3
WebDraw

http://www.jasc.com/products/?
The above link will take you to the products page of Jasc.
This program well exceeds the words excellent.
It falls in the same category as Adobe Photoshop, but is extremely easy to use,
 and most of the plugins used in Adobe Photoshop also work here.
I believe Jasc offers a free 60 day evaluation of this and all of  their
other programs.

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Eye Candy
Xenofex 2
Image Doctor

http://www.alienskin.com/prod_index.html
This is an excellent plugin for Paint Shop Pro.

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Super BladePro
LunarCell
Flexify

http://www.flamingpear.com/
Another set of excellent plugins for Paint Shop Pro.

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XARA X
Xara Webstyle 4
XARA3D

http://www.xara.com/products/
Much of the 3D and 3D ANIMATED text used on this site
 was created with the above software.

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Terragen

Beautiful program to create landscapes.
Below is a small version of the terrain that it created, I use this as my desktop.

 http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/

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All of the programs listed above can be downloaded and used for a trial period.

Try and enjoy.

Happy GRAPHIXZING

BELOW ARE A FEW INTERESTING LINKS THAT MAY
PROVE HELPFUL.