Does anyone know what the best custom graphics software you get is? I am looking at designing banners, and making graphics for websites. I have windows xp, and am currently looking at Corel Graphics Suite 12.

Vladaar

, it's free. So why not to give a try.

Photoshop is the best program for website graphics. But it's also quite expensive, and if you don't want to pay that sort of money, Gimp does a fine job.

Although I'm certainly no professional I've used both and found gimp to be better (once you get use to it's unique interface)

I have to agree that the GIMP is very good, and works quite well cross platform too

Most of the time GIMP works well cross platform. I have had some problems with it in a few cases. There is however a "cheaper" alternative to Photoshop. Paint Shop Pro. While some recent changes to it looked initially quite frustrating, they turned out to no be quite as bad as they initially appeared (well, except for the file browser, which imho, they should have left as a full window). It supports Photoshop plugins and will do a lot that Photoshop can do, as well as some things GIMP can't. The price is far lower though.