: I've been using good ol' pencil and paper to sketch up possible
: deck designs, but I would like a better idea of how my ideas and
: actual wood colours would work. Other than switching to pencil
: crayons LOL, any ideas for good software to use for deck design
: ideas? Preferably something that I could import actual photos of
: wood texture and colour and also get into fairly quickly, I
: would rather not face a 3D modelling program learning curve :)

I use GIMP. It's like PhotoShop but open-source. It's available for OSX, Windows and other operating systems like Debian and Ubuntu. There's a bit of a learning curve but it's not bad. It's a very powerful little program. I use it on just about every project to help my customers visualize what their boat will look like. Below is a rendering I made for the "Nereida" Njord back in 2008. I took a stock picture with a BTD Njord on it and superimposed the rough deck plan. It was an option we ended up not using. I usually use a digital copy of the plans and work off of the plan and profile (see my current build for a great example). GIMP can do a LOT more than what I use it for!
http://clearstreamwood.com/WordPress/projects/new-project-neytiri
http://www.gimp.org/