Hey Y’all! I was just wondering how so many of you make all those awesome signatures and avatars…what programs and stuff. Thanks! 
Look up GIMP. It’s the best free image editor, and it has many advanced features but is still easy to use.
my sigs are made by Photoshop, Image Ready…but my dad has them so it only costs me time…if you were to use them you would get professional quality for around $200…not the best option. You could probably get some program for free that has the same features only less quality.
I use Photoshop for all of mine, but I have the program through school.
GIMP and Paint.net are two free photo editing software that I’ve heard of. I’d download one of them if I were you and just start playing around with all the features. I learn best like that otherwise, you can try finding tutorials online. 
I found an online editor which works extremely well
It’s apparently like Photoshop, some of my friends have told me.
I also use just regular MS Paint in some of my stuff too
Photoshop CS3 since I started last year. Although Adobe updates so fast, they now have CS4! 
I have PS CS3 and Illustrator CS4. Though Illustrator probably isn’t the best bet for dealing with screen shots, it does allow you to open pdf files (PS might do that too, I’m not sure). The best bet with Illustrator is getting a Digital Booklet in pdf means that you can open and “edit” it. I was able to get the exact pen path of the Up logo by doing this.
As some have already mentioned, I use GIMP (A Free program) for most of my sophisticated imagery. I also use a cheap program I bought that’s basically a rip-off of Photoshop called Photopaint. 
For quick images and banners, I use PhotoWeb (Free Program) and MSPaint. You should look them up. 
As a web developer, I use a program called Adobe Fireworks which I design graphics for websites in. Since I’m pretty proficient with the program, I also use it as my everyday graphics editor, too.
It’s a hybrid bitmap & vector editor, which is really important for my line of work, and it also contributes to the sleekness of my stuff, too.
I also use Adobe Illustrator for some of the outlines and original stuff, but as I don’t have a tablet I can’t make full use of it, unfortunately.
gimp is pretty easy to use and you can make great things from it.
free trails are the way to go if you want to use photoshop, lol.
