Manipulating an Image w/ghost explorer

I am always creating hardware independent images with sysprep and also needing to alter hardware dependent images as part of our operation. Lets say you want to alter an image for the sake of removing a program, adding a security patch or tweaking the hardware. Who has exoperience doing this sort of thing with the ghost explorer and has a fund of info on what cryptic files to deal with. I used to do this sort of thing in windows 95-98.
My goal would be to save the time it takes to bring up a machine with my image, alter it and then have to save it and distribute the new image.