I’ve been wanting to learn how to make hands and upper body so I could eventually make an ASL (American Sign Language) GIF dictionary (Yeah I’m deaf lol). Since I’ve found this thread, http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=109010 I’ve been seriously inspired to try my best to follow the tutorial.
Unfortunately, before I could even start modeling, I ran into my first roadblock, How could I make a pic show up inside the 3D view like in the Maya app in the youtube vid?
In your 3D view click the View menu and choose Background image. Then click the Use image button, to add an Image. You can add a unique image for each 3D view window.
Edit: Papa beat me with the Wiki article. For the life of me I could not find that using search in the Wiki.
ah sorry, that is not quite like what I need. I already have 3 planes set up and textured with the reference photo. I’m not yet used to having many views within Blender3D without dual-screen set-up which I don’t have on this laptop so it wouldn’t be practical to have to set up 3-4 views.
I just want to be able to view these reference photo on these 3 plane inside the 3D view.
You can use the UV/Image editor to load an image as a texture on the plane and then set your display to Textured. This will cause the UV image to display in the 3D window.
Blender can have many different desktop Screens set up in the same blend file. So you have a 4-up modeling screen layout and a 1-up main window screen layout.
If you are using a 4 up, have the planes properly positioned, simply hit ctrl-uparrow to make the window that has the mouse in it a maximum window. We have that feature for exactly your need - working using small screens.
Papasmurf, awesome 
I didn’t know of that particular trick. gonna help me out big time.
DichotomyMatt, sorry, I know almost nothing of UVmapping at the moment 
though once I do learn how to uvmap these textures to the planes, I’ll use a combination of your and papasmurf tips to really maximize my productivity 