Need a paint program but can't afford one?

[junk2drive]

I know most here are WinSP fans but here is a SPWAW question. I have trouble reading the maps in SP (all). WAW comes with Map Thing and a Chandla folder. I picked a map dat and with Map thing I can get a pdf that shows each hex elevation number with or without hex overlay. While that helps it is not a visual "topo" map. Chandla has WAWMap. I can pick a dat, and under Tools is Contour Map. I can display it with or without terrain. I can save this image as a bmp, open in paint, and use the plugin to add hexes. My question is how to get the hexes properly on this bmp?