illustration software

[Rowf]

I have a basic wacom graphics tablet and now I'm looking for some software to use for illustrations to accompany short stories and poems.

It needs to allow editing of photographs and scans as well as allowing freehand, not be too complicated, reasonably priced and preferably available from the App Store and have plenty of online tutorials.
Final editing is done in Pages so it needs to play nice with this as well.

Apps I've looked at so far:
Artboard
Sketchbook pro (and free)
Pixelmator

I'm really not familiar with this kind of software at all so any help in the right direction is appreciated, including Pages if there is a better alternative for manipulating text and graphics.

Thanks.

 

[ArchiMark]

What about Adobe Illustrator?

Been around for a long time...

I see Amazon has it for $153....

 

[YESimBLUNTED]

I have to go with what the above poster said.

In my eyes Illustrator is the way to go.

 

[Rowf]

Thanks for the suggestion of Illustrator but this is quite a way over my budget.
At the end of the day it's a hobby and I'm new to it so I can't justify laying out too much cash.
Any other suggestions?

 

[ArchiMark]

OK, check out GraphicConverter....great inexpensive shareware program, developer very responsive and continually refined and updated....

http://www.lemkesoft.com/

 

[Rowf]

Thanks for the link.

I've checked it out and downloaded the manual for a browse.

Cheers.