So, to my surprise last night the auto-update came up with a new version of ArtRage. 2.5 came out yesterday, and included a new collection of pretty cool tools, and some real fixes to other areas of the program that had previously left something to be desired (the new layer functionality is fantastic, even if it is just finally up to snuff with PS) I took some time to mess around with it, with one of the words from my five words request:

You can see copious use of their french curves templates, but one of the neat things is that you can make a stencil out of any image you have. That banjo? It's was done with a picture of mine.

All in all, ArtRage has stepped up nicely.