WrecklessAbandon

Hey everyone, to all of the moders out there that have outstanding textures or good textures at all, how do i add more detail to my textures? i get done adding the base texture but i can never edit it to look worn down. should i use Photoshop or is gimp fine? are there certain patterns or brushes i should use and download? please help! and sorry about the title, it may seem like i am telling you how to do this but im asking and i dont know how to change the title.

i need help really bad! for the past 5 days ive been trying to get my 3D models from blender 2.7 into a nif file. ive tried exporting my model into a 3DS format and importing it into nifscope and manually changeing the models, but i dont know what else to try. i have blender 2.49 or whatever it is and i have the nif plug-in for blender but it never works for me and i cant find a tutorial video on how to do the importing and exporting. please, does anyone know how to fix this? (ps. this is for skyrim if you didn't know).