Hmm .. you might want to check Maya´s doc on that one (or take it to the texturing forum) since entire books have been written on the matter, and explain how to handle U & V´s, make Geometry consistent and then texturing with Photoshop is something I think is out of my scope ... however you might want to try this.

Open your Hypershade, create yourself a material for the object itself, then in the materials atribute, click on the checkered box next to color, and in the created node choose interactive texture (or something like that -i don´t have Maya open right now so I don´t remember the name exactly-) ... Then browse for the texture and voilá you have a badly textured file (but textured at least) .. unless you actually start tweaking the U & V´s

Might want to try the Sword texturing tutorial on the VIP section .. great explanations there.

Hope it helps ...