Anything you want to do in Open Canvas, Painter, GIMP, etc., you can do in Photoshop. Photoshop is the most powerful digital art program out there. I was talking with a professor at one of the colleges I applied for, and he told me that most digital artists work with photoshop since, like I said, it's the most powerful.

On the flipside, it is also the most expensive software. If you're a student, chances are you can get a discount through their online store, or through your studen union.

Tablets are God's gift to mankind. Seriously. If you go to wacom's website, you can take a questionaire that tells you what kind of tablet you might want to consider. Here's a link to the questionnaire. If you're interested in purchasing a tablet to help you color, I would recomend the Intuos line. Intuos tablets have twice the pressure sensitivity levels that Graphire tablets have--a whopping 1,204 levels as opposed to Graphire's 512.  My art teacher told me, when I was looking to purchase a tablet, that there isn't much a difference between the two lines and that you rarely use all of Intuos's levels. I will tell you that's a load of crap. Intuos tablets allow you to make much finer detail lines and function, in my opinion, a lot better. We use Graphires at school, and they make me cry. So I bring my Intuos.