I don't particularly feel right telling a new user to buy anything.   Thats like signing your daughter up for ballet at three, and buying her all the most expensive parephenalia before she even know if she wants to take more than one class.

No matter what you buy, if you don't know what your doing, you still aren't going to really know what you are doing.    There are tons of free things out there, even for post work such as gimp, terragen demo for making backgrounds, and of course more free tutorials and poser items abound all over the net.

One should learn to walk before they try to run.  I would think merchants would PREFER a more educated user, who is buying a product they know they want........ not something they are purchasing to make "instant art"....... then be dissapointed that such a purchase is not what they really needed.........

Nor could it do what they expected.

You won't really know how each purchased item "might" be, until you work with enough items to understand their limitations.