Avatar image software recommendations?

Hey everybody, I want to make my own custom image avatar any photo editing software you would recommend? Thanks-

Photoshop is nice.

GIMP and Paint.NET are free, with many plugins

I would go with photoshop if you can afford it. For being free, Gimp is pretty freaking bad-ass. My only issue with it, is that it has crashed a lot on my computer and I’ve lost work.