There are a lot of good quality freeware tools available online, you don't need to go out and spend a load of money for graphics apps. In a lot of cases, the freeware software is of good standard, and it's quite easy to build a basic site without paying for a load of expensive software.
Here are a couple listed below.
if you know any other ones please post them in this thread.
Free Graphics SoftwareUnless you're making a text-only site, you'll need a graphics editor.
The Gimp - May take a little work getting used to, but once you do it's a goodl piece of kit.
Serif PhotoPlus - A slightly more standard image editor.
JPEG Cleaner - compress your images