suggestions A bunch of random resources

[Sassy Sweet 33]

So to begin with, I'm not exactly sure where this goes on the forums.  This seems to be the best place for it but if it needs to be moved, I'm totally okay with that.

These are just the main tools and resources I use on a regular basis.  I can barely draw a stick figure, so I mostly use line arts and bases.

 

Paint Programs

Not free, but totally worth it
Paint Tool SAI - If you're like me and you have a laptop or tablet with a touch screen, this is definitely worth shelling out a little bit of money for a software license.  Unlike Photoshop, which is also totally worth it but needs a monthly fee, this is just a onetime payment.
(*NOTE on SAI:  An online friend of mine who is also into GFX work said they managed to find a free version of SAI.  However, it lacks most of the "premium" tools that I think make it worth paying a little for.  If you do have the bravery and time to go looking for this one, be very careful where you download from.
Deviant Art P2U bases - Deviant Art has some really awesome P2U bases out there.  Unfortunately, some of the best ones art strictly SAI and/or Photoshop.  Though there are many that will work on GIMP with some extra effort and hassle.)
Corel Painter X - Okay, so this is probably a good chunk of money and I wouldn't suggest getting it if you are only wanting to do Pony OC things.  There is also one hell of a learning curve; changing one little thing can cause your computer to go insane.  

Free Art Programs
I use GIMP for raster pictures and editing bitmaps.  I actually prefer GIMP because it allows for actual pixel control
Inkscape/Ponyscape is good if you're working with vectors.  I just started playing around with these, but it would probably be ideal for a "final product" type of image.  Depending on your level of techie knowledge and GFX and basic skills (I can't draw a circle to save my life), there can be a pretty big learning curve to Inkscape.  I really suggest reading all of the tutorials with the program and this place has some extra.
Paint.NET, I can't say to much on right now.  I just started peeking around at it myself but it seems pretty good so far.  It's free, less hardware intensive than GIMP, easier to learn than Inkscape.  And it has a layers function, yay!

For Colors
I'm a big inspiration person.  A lot of my "ponies" start off from other images.  I have a weird process of finding an anime picture, nature painting, whatever that I like first.  Sherwin Williams has a program called Chip It.  It is far from perfect, because it only uses paint colors that they carry to come up with palettes.  It starts out with 5 colors, but you can use "Edit Colors" and it will show you 10, which is good because you'll almost always get some for of white or black.
The bad part?  It doesn't give you HEX or RGB codes for the colors, which is where http://html-color-codes.info/colors-from-image/ comes in.  Upload an image, pick an area of the image and it will zoom in.  Pick your pixel and you'll get a color code for it.
Depending on your paint program, you may have to use either HEX or RGB.  You can use http://www.rgbtohex.net/ (which also flops to hex to rgb) to get color codes.
Here comes the fun!  I absolutely adore http://www.colourlovers.com/! I use it a lot for inspiration.  If you have a basic idea in mind, Colour Lovers can help you pinpoint palettes (using five colors) that work well together.  It also has a good section of basic shapes that you can use for putting together a Cutie Mark.
And to take it one step farther, for things like shading and gradients, I use http://paletton.com/. It's actually more of a tool for website design, but I use it for more details on palettes.  It is also good for more basic palettes too since you can get monochromatic, adjacent 3, color triad and tetrad.  You can use the "preview" and it will give you an idea of how your color pattern will look on different backgrounds.  I see people getting crap for using certain colors because they "look bad".  Well, maybe they do if you're looking at them with a highly reflective white background which can make them seem more neon.  But if you're on a darker page, like a DA upload with transparency, your eyes may perceive them in a less intense way.  (Random Rant: Not saying that there aren't some colors that are just garish together, but one thing I learned from web design is that there are a LOT of things that can affect how one's eyes perceive light and color.  And it doesn't help that someone's eyes are usually as unique as they are and where someone may see blue-green another person might see greenish blue.  Yes, there is a difference and it can be very frustrating.)

Clipart for CMs if you totally suck at drawing
OpenClipart.org is good if you have a program that can open SVG files.
clker.com is a personal favorite because of the different file types available and a filter engine.
Clipartlord.com
Sweetclipart.com
Mycutegraphics.com (also has background, color pages, and animated gifs which can be useful)
Free-clip-art.com
Webweaver.nu free clipart section.  It doesn't have a search filter, but you can look through basic categories.
pdclipart.org has some good stuff of varying quality
I personally enjoy WikiMedia Commons (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) because if you can't find something, you can always request an image.
I also have sunk to ferreting through clipartpanda.com.  There is no search which is a pain but it looks like it just grabs popular clipart from around the web.  Quite a few of these have their links on the image itself, so you can sort of website hop.
Also, if you see an image on one of the pay for clipart sites like fotosearch or 123rf, try looking at clipartall.com using the same tags.  There is a very good chance that it will come up without a watermark.  You can also use Google Images (mentioned below for different reasons) but be prepared.  If you search by a watermarked image, you'll likely find that the first results are watermarked versions of well but I have also seen where a non-watermarked image will pop up too.

Also, something I learned.  ALWAYS use Google Image Search (https://images.google.com/) to look at your chosen image for cutie marks if you didn't make it yourself.  When I first started trying to get my pen and paper characters online, I would just type a description in google and look through images until I found one that fit really well with what I had in mind.  And it turns out some of them were custom cutie marks on DA that people had paid for.  It is also helpful because sometimes you will run into the opposite.  One person who came to me had "paid" for what wasn't even a tweaked clipart piece that was uploaded YEARS before her custom cutie mark was made.  I still didn't use it anymore... but you'll find that, unfortunately, it happens quite a bit.  

Best tip I can offer is, sadly, go to google first and try typing in a term then looking through images but ALWAYS check your sources and terminology.  If you specifically search for Cutie Mark, you're going to get images from DA that were created for others.

Other Things
https://burner.bonanza.com/ - It isn't great and you may have to go in and do some tweaking up but this is pretty decent for removing white backgrounds from jpgs.  If you have a more complex image, like one with little swirls, you may have more of an issue.

 

[Shadow Beam 1,179]

Hello @Sassy Sweet

Given that this topic contains information regarding tools and applications whose employment usually pertains to the field of visual art, this post shall be relocated into Photo Finish's Magics. Furthermore, the proper prefix of 'suggestions' will be affixed to the title.

Have a lovely day, and my sincere appreciation for your contribution.