Adobe Photoshop
Preferably CS3/CS4
Adobe Photoshop is a great program for faking once you know how to use it;
Easy to use cropping tools, an effective cloning tool and a wide range of color alteration tools and effects.

Links
Photoshop CS4
$699 US
Photoshop CS4 Extended for Animating
$999 US

Microsoft Paint
Microsoft Paint. Simple, yet effective.
If you know all the tricks and creative enough, allot of quality fakes can be made in Paint.

Paint .NET
Paint .NET is a similar but slightly more advanced program than Microsoft Paint;
It's got an easy to use layer setup, tools like the magic wand selection tool and can change the Hue and Saturation of an images color.
I Would Recommend this or Gimp if you cannot afford Adobe Photoshop.

Link
Paint .NET

Gimp
GNU Image Manipulation Program
Gimp is like Paint .NET with allot more features and a great range of brushes and many other great tools.
This would be recommended if you like drawing NPC's for your fake from scratch. Personally, i used to love this before i got Photoshop

Link
Gimp 2.6

Fireworks
Don't Really use this much, i got it in my Adobe CS4 Suite; From what I've heard it is an extremely good program for faking due to its tool setup for Video Game Graphics, it is also very easy to learn.

Fireworks CS4
$299 US

Know others? Post them.

I've never seen anybody who bought Photoshop... or something CS4... Gimp is great... but some slight things I hate... Paint.Net was my replacement for paint once. Its great!

Add Adobe/Macromedia Flash for people who wants to do some advance animation... And make it to a video or something...EDIT: Also interactive fakes =D!
There was another animation one that was free but low tech... I forgot it's name...

My Friend Bought me the CS4 Master suite from China... So it was a present

I use Paint, Fireworks is too complicated, and I'm too lazy to do anything else.

I use photoshop, but recently I haven't needed to use Paint as much only for text.

Take a picture of the reciept and I'll be gasped for the first time...
Lol...

You got lucky =D

Great list, I have PS CS(no numbers, so I guess is first CS one )

I found your old topic for fakers who lost MS Paint, here is the link you posted

http://www.mediafire.com/?5i1gzbymgnk

Paint all the way for me

All I use is the GIMP, not on;y because it's prepackaged with Linux, but because it's so expandable. I have all sorts of brushes, all free. I do use Quark XPress on my Windows machine, got that a gift, but it works wonders for adding in text, ETC.

I use Photoshop CS4 (Yehhh baby), but I might get Gimp cos it sounds cool.

~nightpk~

Gimp has some uniqe brushes I don't see in photoshop cs4... I only use Photoshop for recolouring items and other stuff.

I used PhotoShop CS4 Extended. You can do a lot on it.

So, for a beginner, what free program do you recommend?

It has to be easy to use and free.

Microsoft Paint
or
Paint.Net....

Once you want to add some effects and recoloring you should go onto Gimp.

paint.net is more similar to fireworks then microsoft paint. i dident use paint.net for a long time because i thought it was the same as Microsoft paint. i use it now and am angry that i was misinformed. its almost as good as fireworks which i think is best for faking

Now you did

I use paint and photoshop for recoloring.. And Photoshop for extreme faking. Yes - I have been faking and No - It will never be relased.

If you were to ever release your fakes, the awesomness will burn our eyes...

So what would be a good program for shading?

Normal Definition - Microsoft Paint
HD - Photoshop/Gimp

I use Photoshop CS3 (soon to get CS4). Employee discount rules. I have it because of graphics (LP's, SP's, logos, etc., etc.), but for faking I'd recommend The GIMP. There is no need for Photoshop for fakers (unless you have it). Photoshop is very easy and I use it, MS Paint, is way too simple, GIMP doesn't match my style, and freezes every ten seconds, PDN is way too simple, etc.

You should mention that there are trials for every version of Photoshop (only CS4 is available on the Adobe website though), and there is a trial for PSE 7 (Elements, not Extended), PaintShop Pro, Aviary (image editor is completely different and sucks in my opinion, but the vector editor is no where near Adobe Illustrator, but it's great for free), SplashUp, etc.

You don't need to fake at all to rate people
Anyone can rate, even without fakes. Anyone can give out an award, too. Although, to give out an award, you have to make the award, so that would be considered a fake already . But you don't need anything just to rate people

I have macromedia flash 8 pro, however unfortunately I'm not very sure how to get down onto pixel-by-pixel level, I'm not even sure it's possible it's an immensely powerful program but some thingre a little tedious. (help anyone?)

Just zoom in with Ctrl++ and zoom out with Ctrl+-
For best results, right-click and check "Snap to pixels", and uncheck everything else. It should look like this:

Now, I don't recommend using Flash entirely for your fakes. It's great for animation and interactivity, but otherwise, faking with it would be rather difficult. If you want to make animated and interactive fakes, by all means, use Flash, but you should use other graphical programs to do most of the faking

Thanks so much but unfortunately it didn't solve my problem it ends up looking something like this

my problem is that you can still draw through like half a pixel (which should be impossible...) do you know how I could fix this?
(each square is supposed to be a pixel)

Anyone else here use Photoshop CS4 Extended and GIMP together?

Why are you drawing in Flash? Flash is vector-based, not bitmap-based
You can't draw pixels in Flash, it's not even a graphics program. You're supposed to make all the graphics in a different program, and use Flash to animate them together or give them interactivity

When it comes to shading, I use Paint, select a color (like gray), change the shade of gray slightly according to how the light is shining on it, paste it into Gimp, use the Select By Color tool, then I use the Colorize tool and recolor it however I want
Paint is good for cropping, resizing (in some cases), and copying/pasting text, but not too much else

I use Photoshop CS1 for everything I make, I also have CS2 but somehow I like sticking with CS1

Black magic anyone? Or is that joke to old

The joke isn't very old.

I have photoshop CS, but I have no idea how to use it. I just mess around in it.

So, I got a new computer and it came with a pretty cool drawing tool called AutoCAD or something. Has anybody heard of it and can it be used for faking? If so, how?

Lol, no. It's for designing products.

It can't be used for faking. It's used to program CADCAM machines. CADCAM machines make multiple cuttings in plastic or wood.

I use Adobe PS CS3. It's not the extended one but it works fine. I wanted to make an animation fake with it but I have no ideas. If you want you can PM me an idea if you have one.