I don't know which is the best,i am using gimp only...
But i think photoshop is one of the best :/

is that what you used for your avatar?

Thunder, so its too simple AND too hard? D:

Photoshop CS4 Extended. Includes 3D painting to edit the model directly.

mabe gimp photoshop out on a limb

lol yeah,its THAT MUCH SIMPLE that it way too hard for me,too much work for my brain lol

I find that GIMP is horrible with resizing photos and pages, unless you do the damn resolutions/coordinates check which is damn hard. Sometimes I like to use MSPaint just because it resizes in a snap. Pixel art is outdated though...

I will use GIMP for some spinny heads, but IMO it's horrible for me. I want to buy photoshop, but like Blam said it's really bloated, whereas GIMP and MS Paint are a lot... neater.

Omg yes! The resizing sucks D:
Making hands takes so much longer. Same with feet. I remember in AI, you could just drag it to resize, but in GIMP, I have to do it seperately and resize by pixel size.

While we're on this, does anyone know of any plugin or addon that let's you smoothly resize? I would really appreciate it.

PhotoShop is easier to use depending on what version you have.
It adds much more detail and you can virtualy do anything.

My avatar is from this movie: http://alec.3rdc.com/num1000remix-hi.swf

I use 3 programs!

To make the basic head and some details: Project Dogwaffle (It's a freeware paint and effects program)

To add detail, sharpen/blur, and just retouch in general: Photoshop 5.5. You can get the old versions for cheap.

To add lighting effects and enhance previous effects: Gimp.