for quick texture maps, transluscency maps, and bump maps, gradient fill, or phototouch-up, WinGimp can work in the absense of a higher power such as Photoshop.

Wingimp handles most common art extensions, but is notably lacking in .art and .tga formats, but for bmp, jpg, and gif, it works fine.

unfortunately, Wingimp's latest version is no longer free

fortunately, the older versions are still available at
http://www.wingimp.org/download.php

I recommend version 1.2.5, we've had some troubles with 1.3

Or, do the org a favor and buy the 2.02. The 1.2.5 is just fine, though, and still avalable for free. Bit of a learning curve, but worth better than the price ($0)

You can download windows version of GIMP for free from here:

http://www2.arnes.si/~sopjsimo/gimp/

cool, thanks Timo. Link is to the newer version, 2.something.

tried it, not many big differences to the old, little more stable and still lightyears behind photoshop. They enhanced their tool gui, added a few features, notably an animation module for gif creation. However, at the price of >free< you still can't beat it