http://www.gimp.org/
anyone?
What is the GIMP
The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
Features and Capabilities
This is only a very quickly thrown together list of GIMP features. This is only the tip of the iceberg.
Full suite of painting tools including Brush, Pencil, Airbrush, Clone,etc.
Tile based memory managent so image size is limited only by available disk space.
Sub-pixel sampling for all paint tools for high quality anti-aliasing
Full alpha channel support
Layers and channels
A Procedural Database for calling internal GIMP functions from external programs as in Script-fu
Advanced scripting capabilities
Multiple Undo/Redo (limited only by diskspace)
Virtually unlimited number of images open at one time
Extremely powerful gradient editor and blend tool.
Load and save animations in a convenient frame-as-layer format.
Transformation tools including rotate, scale, shear and flip.
File formats supported include gif, jpg, png, xpm, tiff, tga, mpeg, ps, pdf, pcx, bmp, and many others.
Load, display, convert, save to many file formats.
Selection tools including rectangle, ellipse, free, fuzzy, bezier and intelligent.
Plug-ins which allow for the easy addition of new file formats and new effect filters.
Over 100 plugins already available.
Supports custom brushes and patterns
Much, much more!
i think this is a pretty useful tool if u cannot afford £600 for something liek Photoshop, or are just starting out with GFX