Apologies agh98, but don't get your feelers bent; I tend to give out nicknames. Since these forums already have so many self-given nicknames I lay off a bit, but I also tend to alter them to (IMHO) suit the moment. Admittedly I did not notice that you had "No Logo".(See this thread for the implied joke.)

Grasshopper refers to the television show 'Kung Fu', of which even the reruns have been cancelled. (Ultimately saving my wife her peace of mind.)

RE: Paint-
When I got my first PC I had no Office suite whatsoever, and while I was weening myself off my PowerMac I had no idea what to buy, so I learned what was there. Many people who are extremely familiar with Micro$oft's products think I'm the bomb with Paint. Often someone will ask "What did you use to draw that?", and when I say Paint their eyes widen.

I say all this not to build myself up, rather to say to you that Paint is not a trash program just because it was free. People dis' Paint a lot. I became "fluent" in Paint because that's all I had at my fingertips. Play with all the buttons, and don't cheat yourself out of "Paste Opaque" and "Paste Transparent", each will help you in specific situations. NEVER fail to go to the Help Index; not everything's in there, but you CAN often get help. (Take the "fluff-words" out of what you want to do and search on the Web too!)

You can open .jpeg's, .gif's, .bmp's, some Adobe files, all through paint. Once you've got 'em in Paint, their YOURS to butcher. You can trim 'em and slice 'em. You can copy most of those things from web pages and paste them right into newer versions of Paint. If you have an older version you may have to "save picture as:", and then open it in Paint from wherever you saved it. Freeware Web buttons from developer sites? They're all yours to desecrate at will for Pronto use.

Rather than try to draw small "lined" arrows and brackets (or any formatting or punctuation), get it up on a document in Word (or even WordPad), size it, color it, and then highlight and copy it to Paint. Select it tight, and paste it transparent right on top of your button or icon you've drawn up to represent a lighting can in the ceiling, or some such architectural doo-dad.

Isolating objects: You can select and edit the background color to white leaving only the object. By doing this you effectively trim off all the pheripheral content and are left with just the object, with none of the manual cropping that was necessary in older Paint versions.

This IS a bit archaic, but I typically like to open a two or three instances of Paint. Depending on what I'm up to, one will be the working drawing, one might be just a "holding tank" for images I just grabbed, and one will be a toolbox full of shapes I use repeatedly, or am in the process of editing.

(You got'sta have the RAM & Mhz to open Paint in multiple instances, AND surf for images, AND edit in Word, AND check email, AND check Webmail, AND post to Remote Central, blah, blah, blah simultaneously, and a good video card is just a plus in any case.)

Is there better stuff? You bet; my son-in-law works for Disney in graphics and animation and he won't touch a PC for his work. I know people who will only use SGI for art. You can also get double-throwdown, time-and-a-half, over-and-under, double-barrel programs for your PC, but Paint's free, and therefore, Paint is your friend.

If you need any more tips we'll go offline and quit eatin' up drivespace on RemCen's server. But if you are to become Shaolin, practice is the path you must follow.