Back again, guys.
I've found several free possibilities for my limited needs:

Ultimate Paint:
http://www.ultimatepaint.com/

Vicman's Photo Editor:
http://www.vicman.net/vcwphoto/

Paintbox:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multime...PaintBox.shtml

Image Forge:
http://www.cursorarts.com/ca_imffw.html

Has anyone had any experience with these? I could download them all and try them out, but if anyone has a 'don't let that thing anywhere near your computer' warning, I'd rather find out beforehand.

Meanwhile, I'm taking a look at a few online photo editors. My needs are so simple that almost anything will do - apart from MSPaint.


Wormspeaker, I've got Paint on Win98 doing jpegs, but not transparency. However, on my new Win2k it doesn't seem to handle anything but bmps - there's progress for you!


As a sci-fi gamer, the cars I want top-downs of haven't been built yet. I might be able to adapt a few photos, or take pics of Matchbox cars, but the problem with photorealism is it raises the game. Once you have one photorealistic object, they all have to be like that, otherwise they just don't look right. And adapting a photo with MSPaint's 'splodge fills' is beyond my skill. This is why I want to stick to a cartoon style, so that I can fill in a bit more plain red to extend a roof, or add a bit more plain grey to extend a windscreen. No way can I do that with photo textures, it's just too complex.

Up until now, I've been working with 20x20 pixel tiles because I have some small chance of adapting them with my meagre skills.

Maybe one of the other applications will allow a breakthrough.