A few dumm questions about texteures and things

1. First imagine if you will a person who has never never never used a program like Photoshop or Gimp or whatever, nor has any great experiance in computer graphics or programming. Now, if I wanted to learn how to make textures, take pictures and cut, paste and merge them and the most arcane skill of all .... making alpha channel thingies, which would be best for this idiot to use? Photoshop? (I have a slightly older version a friend gave me when he upgraded 5.5 I believe) GIMP? Or some other program that easy for the above mentioned idiot?

2. Is there a good site either on the web or in SL to teach me these things? Like "OK Billy, now click on this symbol .... Good job Billy! Move it over here now ..."

Thanks

Here are some good tutorials:

http://spacethinkdream.com/articles/article/6/alpha-channel-primer
http://spacethinkdream.com/NEscher_SecondLifeGuide_1.pdf
/109/02/12684/1.html

Chip has some great templates to follow when making clothes:
/109/ec/22502/1.html
/109/72/40762/1.html

Feel free to IM me and ask if you have any questions! It takes awhile to hit your stride when making clothes -- things will click for you. I know that these templates helped me a hell of a lot.