What is the best computer program for making icons, wallpapers, etc.

i always use 'paint' then i save it in to my images and open it in my fanpop profile. you can also muck around with photos off the internet by saving them and then opening them in a paint document, then basically just scribble and draw whatever you want on them.
that's what i do.
hope this helped.
;-D

I love The Gimp. It does basically every thing that Photoshop does only for FREE. It's more complicated than paint so it takes a bit of learning but does So Much More. There are tutorials to help figure it out.
link