Perky and Lapsang, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Chief Architect is the professional version of Home Designer, the program I use. But Chief Architect costs $2,000 or more. I started with the $79 version, Home Designer Interiors. I liked it so much I decided to put down $500 for Home Designer Pro, which has a lot more capabilities but not as many as Chief Architect. Here's a comparison chart with pricing of the Home Designer products: https://www.homedesignersoftware.com/products/product-chooser.html And here's info on Chief Architect: https://www.chiefarchitect.com/products/interiors/#buy As far as learning how to use these products, they have some really good training videos. Here's a very thorough one on using HD Pro for kitchen design: https://video.homedesigner.chiefarchitect.com/player/player.php?id=1589&th=1&autoplay= You might watch this to get an idea how it works before you buy it. Also, I'd be happy to try to answer questions about using it.

I'm going to slightly disagree with lazy about the GIMP. It's free, but it still looks and functions like software designed by a committee. If you have Pshop experience, yeah, you can learn it fairly easily, but the documentation is absolutely terrible for people with no photo editing experience. She's right that it's very capable, though. But it's free, so you might as well try it. If you have a mac, try the GIMP derivative Seashore. It doesn't do exactly everything GIMP does, but it's easier and also free. I used to write books about Pshop, more specifically Pshop Elements, but these days I mostly use only Affinity Photo. If you have windows I don't know how the windows version is, since I only use it on the mac side. They have superb documentation on their site, alas for me (no book opportunity there). If you really want to grapple with PS or PSE, the free trials are here: http://www.adobe.com/downloads.html But these days I'd say that PS is easier to use than PSE, unfortunately. PSE is all junked up with useless clutter now and many of the tools don't work as well as they do in full PShop.

Sophie Wheeler, I love coming to the GardenWeb kitchen forum for advice from really helpful people. You seem to be pushing the "go hire a pro" route on this thread and others. Why? This forum is for those who want to try themselves and design themselves, or design partially themselves. Six years ago, I designed a stunning, very small kitchen thanks to Gardenweb's help! And for my new old kitchen that needs a re-do, I have a beautiful drawing with pencil and paper, to scale. I am simply asking for advice because I see the benefit of working in 3D and would like to try it. I don't want to hire a kitchen designer. I didn't need one last time, and I don't need one this time. But I do like to bounce around ideas with other kitchen design fans and DIYers.

I found Home Outside helpful to make a base drawing of our site and make a functional diagram. It was less helpful for me when it came time to making concept drawings and final designs, but I think that points to my limited design skills vs. the limitations of the app. So it won’t design the backyard for you, but it’s a great tool! https://homeoutside.com