It is possible to turn Blender's procedural textures into uv textures with the very handy Texture Baker script which can be accessed from the UV window. Just unwrap your object in the UV window (a whole other subject in itself!), then with the uv map selected, click the UV tab and select Texture Baker. It will then ask for a name for your texture, then ask if you want to replace an existing image or not, then ask you for the texture resolution. The perfectly aligned texture map will be rendered to your output directory (c/temp by default).

You can then load the image up into Gimp or Photoshop or whatever to add any details you might like. Then load it into Blender as a uv texture it will align perfectly. Then I am sure Bryce will recognise it.

As for seeing the thumbnails while holding control that is an excellent tip! Im sorry about your crashing problem, it seems to work fine for me. I think haloedrain may be right on the ram subject. Check to see how much free ram you have available, or try it with Blender as the only open application.

Thanks for the tip!