[url=http://www.gimp.org/]GIMP[/url] is the freeware (GPL license) of your choice, but it took my some time to get used to.
To my knowledge [url=http://www.xara.com/]Xara[/url] used to be free, but now only offers a trial version. Perhaps you can find an older one.

Good luck

Why customize *that* skin? It's UGLY and was made only to show people some examples of what they could do with the 'custom' skin.

Hi EdB,

I did not notice that it was ugly. To the opposite, I liked it because of its simplicity. I am curious. To your opinion, what are the really cool skins??

Greetings,
Olivier Langlois

What's good is a matter of taste, but skinners_guide is nothing more than 'custom' with a few examples of how you can customize stuff by editing the _main.php file. In other words we never imagined someone would like it but we included it to help people see what they could easily accomplish. Plus the notes in the file help with that.

Anyway if you like it that's cool - enjoy it! And best of luck on the image editing. I've never been very good at that stuff.