Thanks very much Gaieus!

I am using photoshop to edit the plant images as you have explained and it is working well , and is awesome once rendered.
How do I make them 'faceme' images , normally when I import a .jpg it gives me that option , however , I am importing these images as a .psd and I cannot change thereafter , or probably can but just dont know how.

Thanks again.

Thanks , Ill give it a bash. Would you be able to suggest an appropriate program that I can download ?

Hi
I do landscape design and primarily work on AutoCAD. I am finding sketchup a lot more fun and a much better tool for my proposals. I am having a problem though in terms of plant material in my landscapes because they are very specific and to give an accurate representation the plant components need to be 100% accurate.
I have found a lot of very accurate components on the internet but not specifically what I am looking for. I now need to start creating these plants myself. What I would like to do is , take a photo of leaves/flowers/barktextures and colours etc, i then would like to make use of them in sketchup. I can add the textures and colors to the paintbucket no problem , the issue comes in when I wanto import an image of a flower or a leaf. its shape is very specific and i dont know how to crop it to the specific shape and keep it that way for importing to the sketchup model.
Can anyone help me to achieve this ?