Here's what I consider to be a rather promising paint program. Not a replacement for Photoshop (though some have called it a Photoshop killer) but loaded with interesting effects and plugins and filters and and and ...

http://www.squirreldome.com is where it's at
http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle has a mirror
http://www.freewareweb.com has it too and rates it amongst top 20 download

Version 1.11b is free, renderosity.com sells the commercial version (around $40 I think)

A dogwaffle discussion forum lives at yahoogroups


-Philip