Generally I'm pretty good at digging things up on my own, but in this case I've been striking out.
I'm looking for a simple, free (or possibly shareware) image creation/editing program. Everything I've tried is TOO simple: import image, change levels, and crop. I need something a little bit more intense than that--I'd like to be able to start an image from scratch, do some general text implementation, some pasting of external images... things I consider to be basic.
But maybe I've been too accustomed to using Photoshop to know what basic is anymore.
Anyway, I've got a music blog that I want to make a header for. And I want it to look something like this:

which I had made for a prior blog a number of years back on a PC.
Any suggestions?