There are a few here who use PdN for mapping (PeaceHeather for one - do a member search) and have gotten some nice results. There are even a few tuts for it. That been said, most ppl here use either Gimp, Photoshop or the CC3 suite, so most of our tuts are for these progs. I have found that it it not neccessarily the prog that gets the results, rather your ability to use it that makes things look good. Gimp and Photoshop use simular methods (function names might be different and such), and I have heard that PdN can do simular stuff but the methods are not so familiar. If you are familiar with PdN, I would suggest looking at some of the tuts and figure out how PdN handles the methods mentioned for the other progs.

And Welcome to the guild