Thank you for the link Kathye. I'll be sure to check it out. :-) Thank you also for reminding me about Context Free, I've found a lot of uses for it. Another very useful bit of freeware is the "Cumulus" PS plug-in from Flaming Pear. It's not on their site and I got it from AgentSmith from the Bryce Forum. I've used it for a lot of cloud backgrounds and for smoke in my postworking. I've just started getting the hang of Carrara's particles and Cumulus can make some excellent "splats" for smoke particles.