I think the most commonly used softwares are Gimp and Inkscape. Gimp for pictures and Inkscape for the word patterns. The are also used together, do some on one, load the project on the other and finish it. Both are free down loadable software. I have both, but have not figured it out yet. There are many great tutorials on Youtube on how to use them. I have heard of others that people use, Coyote, Adobe something.. and some others. Charles Dearing, one of the most noted picture type pattern makers does it the old fashion way, least it appeared that way from one of his tutorials, he traces the picture by hand.
