Personally I use Paint Shop Pro. It is cheaper than Photoshop, and with some external plugins (PSP is adobe compatible meaning that most Photoshop plugins/filters will work in PSP) and can do about 90% of what Photoshop can do.  Plus the learning curve is way, way less.

I started with Paint Shop Pro and I have Photoshop CS, but I just can't wrap my head around it. The interface is so different and it seems to take a gazillion steps to accomplish what I can do in PSP in 2 or 3 steps.

Anyway, a graphic program is only as good as the person using it.  To do basic post work like fixing poke through or resizing the image or adjusting hue, you can do any of that in a free program like GIMP.  If you want to do digital painting, you can do that in any program. If you do digital painting you will want to get a graphic tablet because it isn't so easy or acturate with a mouse.  A tablet works just as well with PSP as it does with Photoshop or PhotoImpact etc.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi