Best software for adding text to images?

So, I’m on the hunt for some software—ideally something free if it exists—that lets me overlay text onto images with way more freedom than what I've got right now. I need to be able to tilt the text at all sorts of angles, go vertical, horizontal, or even do that cool skewed/perspective look where it lays flat against an object. Right now, I’ve just been messing around with Adobe Photoshop, which isn't bad per se, but it’s super limiting for what I actually want to do... it basically only gives me the standard vertical and horizontal options. It won't let me rotate things freely or get that 3D perspective vibe I'm after.

Does anyone out there know of a little program that can actually handle this kind of stuff?

Basically, this is the kind of effect I'm trying to pull off with my text:

Microsoft WordArt
It isn't free.

I just pasted this text from Joshua Garcia3 onto an image in Word.