@lonewolf said: I see alot of talk about Photoshop use in conjunction with Sketchup, is this a necessary program or are there alternatives? "PhotoShop" is already a kind of synonime for all image editing programs. There are other alternatives, of course, I myself use Corel PhotoPaint for instance but there is also Gimp - a free alternative for PS. In any case, you don't necessarily need an image editor but it may be useful to have one in your arsenal.