OK I had good luck at putting out a call for C and Basic programmers before. This site...
http://imagic.weizmann.ac.il/~dov/gimp/
Has some fairly clear examples of scripts for GIMP which is a programmable Paint program used by the devs and others of us. We have some desires in the area of batch-generating maps for the game. In particular I have an interest in a script to make GIMP do this...
load .tga and open layers
for 3 colors
rclick image, select-> by color, choose color, Shft-Ctrl-L
go to layers, clik "keep transp", clik "new layer"
next color
after getting 3 transparent floating layers, select blur
Ctrl-M to merge all layers then save
the 3 colors are .. 255/255/255, 195/87/44, 44/135/195