Hi Turbo,

For:
- Animated gifs and banner ads
- Creating thumbnails
- Optimizing images (Photoshop does this, but I'm guessing there is an easier way than image by image).
I use Macromedia Fireworks, is perfect for that and very easy to use

For:
- Building gallery pages

Arles: http://www.digitaldutch.com/arles/

Regards,
Lunae