Premiere CS4 is very powerful - a little fiddly to use, but no more so than most of the other powerful video editing programs.
Photoshop again very powerful, and if money is not an object, it is worth having - it is not much harder to use than the cheaper options either. As a bonus, pretty much every tutorial is based on it.
Bear in mind when you say "I need to do something to haul my photography out of the gutter" Photoshop is not going to anything to help there - it can make a good photo just right, but it really doesn't do much good for a boring or bad photo. Getting a good photo is still all about pressing the camera button at the right time whilst pointing it at the right thing (and possibly using the right settings, but that is a bit more of an advanced thing, and less important). Probably, like most 'creative' things, the best thing you can do to improve your photographs is to take pictures and invite other photographers to insult them (on courses they call it a 'crit' session or something). The advice you get will probably include tons of useless comments from people with no souls saying that you should learn about the 'rule of thirds' or other such junk but if you learn to take everything with a pinch of salt and sort out what is actually useful advice for you, having people be rude about your work is one of the best ways to improve at stuff, much better than showing them to people in a situation where social pressures encourage people not to be rude.
Joe
