Photoshop might be the thing that you want. Most of the free fonts that you can download are never kerned correctly and PS allows me to go back and manually adjust kerning and leading to my liking. Text on a curve, circle, path, vertical is also quite easy. There are some things that cannot be done with text and for that you need sign-making software (like a title that is flat across the top and curved across the bottom...there is a work-around but it's tedious). There used to be user forums (might still be there) over at Letterhead Fonts and they knew what software to use for that but I can't remember it right now. PS also gives you full access to digital editing but getting true painterly brushes takes some web searching as the defaults are just kind of average. The only thing really lacking, in my opinion, is the image hose or image tube (where the brush is made up of different pictures) and so for that Gimp or Paint Shop Pro is what to use...although I rarely do. Basically PS is a nice all-in-one but lacks a few things.