Hi, am a casual Poser user, and am trying to start making / editing my own textures.  Have been using an old Paint Shop Pro (like ver 3.0 or so).  What program do folks recommend for use?  Is there a free application that works, or one that can be downloaded for under $100 anywhere that anyone recommends? 

thanks in advance.

I use Paint Shop Pro X and Photoshop Elements 4 (both in the $100 range). PSP is available by download, but elements is CD only, no download.

There is also a very powerful freeware program called Gimp. I'm not sure where you get it from, but it has pretty much the same functionality as PSP I think.

Attached Link: http://www.thegimp.org

There's also Dogwaffle (there's a free and spendy version), something in freebies called Loutex, and probably dozens of others as well.

Go for Gimp and don't spend any money until you know what you really want. I learned on Gimp. Now I use PSP and Painter9.5. Some are going to tell you that PhotoShop is the only way to go but you can buy a new computer for less than what PS is and the other lower priced paint apps are just about as good anyways.

There's a wide range of paint programs under the $100 mark. As well as what's been mentioned already, I'd add;

Free; Deep Paint 2 (ex-commercial program) at

www.download.com/Deep-Paint/3000-2191_4-10398243.html

Reasonable cost; Corel Photopaint as part of the Corel Draw Suite. The current version is X3, and that's expensive, but legitimate (sometimes unused) earlier versions frequently appear on Ebay, say versions 11 or 12 for $70-80. I got a copy of version 9 for £10GB a couple of years ago, and it's still my main paint program.

Thank you all for your tips and advice.  I downloaded GIMP and am feeling my way through it.