Hellsatan
I m Professional Graphic/3D art, so I have Photoshop 7, Painter 7, Fireworks MX and CorelDraw 10. But of course I prefer Photoshop better than others (biased =P)
But members at my forum have good suggests on some cheap but power programs that can do some or many that Photoshop or high end programs can do with button graphics. These programs are basic but powerful in some area. So here s my members' suggests (also I tried some of these, it is great but I m Photoshop freak/loyal =)
'non-expensive' programs:
3DWebButton 1.7
Banner Maker Pro
Button Factory
CoffeeCup Button Factory Version 6.1
Button Studio 1.44
ButtonFly 2.0
My members was blabbing too much about this product also it does look good to me, I m right now thinking of buy this product for productivity if need. *Con* it is mighty slow but it is good button maker program anyway.
These are good for buttons or some small or simple web graphics, if you want to do more than just gradients or need more control then buy Photoshop or [cough]Paint Shop Pro[/cough]
Hope it will help you somewhat =)