Theme creator software: Recommendations?

Hi guys.
I want to know if anybody has any good recommendations for theme creator software? I have seen different posts related to artisteer and themedream ( which appears to work with cs4, which I have).I have worked with dreamweaver some making general html, css walkthru tutorials, however it seems that there is alot more coding work involved trying to use wp within dreamweaver and then re uploading it back into wordpress.

Currently I have 2 blogs over at wordpress.com, I have downloaded wordpress and plan on installing it at my webhost. The web host is 1&1, which offered me dreamweaver cs4 for free, but they do support wordpress and have mysql.

I am a general novice or beginner so I want the easiest possible way to do this. I currently use a 3 column blog, and would just like to put either a picture or post viewer in header which would alternate with current posts or pictures. I have seen Siteviewer plugin, which I guess enable you to put a picture viewer on your site, but would it work in the header?

Thanks for any help.