Best cartexture program

I've seen some sweet cartextures on the exchange, and I've been wondering what programs people use to make them. I use microsoft paint, and it dosent have good quality output.

[Turbo]

I use paint. I just photoshop some extra pics and input them into paint

NoLimits compresses the cartextures more than MSPaint would. I get all my templates from Toerti's NL Cartexture page

use the program you are most comfortable with, i personally use photoshop but if you cannot afford it (No offence intended) you can get gimp or paint.net. All these programs take a while to get used to, but once you get the hang of it you will be fine.

I use Gimp. It's almost the same thing as photoshop, but it's free.
http://www.gimp.org/