For those of y'all who like to dabble with photos, but aren't serious enough about it to buy PhotoShop, here's an option.
GIMP is a free program that's pretty simple to use.
GIMP - for Windows
I hadn't been a Kelliebean for very long before I was feeling envious of all the neato work that you guys were doing with photos and making siggies. I wanted to learn how to do it, but didn't want to spend the bucks for PhotoShop. I think it was Lindsay who put me on to GIMP. It works great; at least for my needs. I made my siggy with it.
There's also a very cool tutorial. It's free, too.
GIMP Video Tutorials