Programs to edit and create .png liveries?

Wondering which programs are recommended for editing and creating new airplane liveries? Don’t have access to Photoshop. All I have are MS Paint and PhotoImpact X3. Dealing with coloring is a chore. Also, are there tutorials anywhere for doing this. I’ve learned a few things by trial and error, however, I’m stumbling on the coloring for fuselage.

Use gimp in latest version, there you can open the psd templates and you have the layers

Thanks. Do the respective layers need to be merged or does that take place automatically. Man, so much to learn here, yet, I’m intrigued enough to see if it’s doable for me.

at the end of modding you save from the PSD file to a PNG so everything is merged automatically then…