Is there any good freeware or shareware programs that allow you to create cool graphics fairly easily?

See our thread here for some Graphics Design & Editing freeware.

Thanks, I had a look at these but any idea of which is the best one for designing and morphing graphics

Designing - that depends what you mean. All the freeware programs have basic "painting" functions but if you are looking for more advanced capabilities like textures, layering, smudging and other pseudo-photographic stuff, 3D effects, etc. then (I think) the only freeware that will touch that would be the GIMP.

Morphing - There's a good freeware program called WinMorph. Sometimes it's unstable so it pays to save your work often but the results are good. http://www.debugmode.com/winmorph/download.php

Hello,

I agree with Rimmer on using the GIMP. I would also recommend that you check out InkScape. It's an Open Scource, scalable vector graphics program (SVG) that allows you to import popular image formats and create high quality vector images. It will also export files in PNG,(a popular format that supports layers and transparent type images) so if you plan on using the images on the web your covered.

The vector type graphic will allow you to scale images, and keep the same high quality because instead of coloring by the pixel, it uses math coordinates to specify coloring regions.

Note:
There are free Photoshop plug-ins that also work with the GIMP, and will add more commands to use on images.

Hope this helps,

nos