I still use rock slabs, chisel, and hammer. 
I use Inkscape, a vector-based program that, like GIMP, is free. I like it but then again, I never get close to winning though that has more to do with my skills rather than the program. http://inkscape.org/
I never actually used Photoshop. I have always used Corel Draw and Corel PhotoPaint which cover both sides of the Vector vs. Bitmap battles. They are nominally kind of expensive, but if you have a kid in school almost anywhere, including elementary school, you might want to look into teaching them illustration using the Corel Draw Suite, which includes both Draw and PhotoPaint. Their suite costs about $500 nominally, but only around $100 for an educational version with which you can teach your child, and play with yourself when the kid’s at school- you know, to make sure you have the skilz to teach them when they are around.
Basically, much of the functionality of Adobe’s products is there, just the names are a bit different, and some of the really cool stuff in CS5 is missing.
can anyone see the other picture? the amusement park? -I can’t get it to load.
I miss photoshopping pictures.
pencil and paper
…then rub on monitor until graphite has absorbed into computer. 
Me too. Not sure why the amusement park pic isn’t loading and I can’t seem to find another version of it… oh well, at least your awesome eagle pic is working (even if it wasn’t done on Photoshop. Who fact checks these things?)
at the same time? that seems wrong, somehow.
I’ve used Corel Draw for doing line work. It’s fairly easy to learn quickly, and I find it a little more intuitive than Photoshop. That said, Corel Photo Paint is more complicated for the coloring than Photoshop, and I haven’t yet figured out how to do layers in either Corel program (which makes the Printable Version requirement of each color in different layers quite tricky…).
Also, could woot post a Corel shirt template on the submission page? Or a JPG? Something? None of the ones available open properly in Corel, even though it’s supposed to be able to import photoshop files.
I use humble ol’ Photoshop 6 and Illustrator 9 from the year 2000. Sure, they crash when you least expect it and they don’t have fancy brushes or effects, their Pantone library is way out of date and they lag in Windows 7 like an 80s transatlantic phone call but…
Wait, where was I going with this?
I stick with Photoshop. I periodically try to teach myself Illustrator, but every time I touch it beyond “Live Trace” I get unbelievably frustrated.
And frankly, Live Trace frustrates the hell out of me too.
I actually refused to update from Ai10 for years. I hated the CS suite and didn’t use it until CS3. Ai10 will always be my baby (shoo-be-doop aahh).
These days I employ CS4 and whatever else I have stuffed into my hard drive.
I have a vector wrinkly shirt template I’ll see if I can figure out how to upload. I took one of the wrinkly shirt templates, maybe Cho’s, (maybe not) and did a live trace of it, and then made different layers for each shirt color. So you have a layer for the background, a whole bunch of shirt color layers, and a layer for the design, and maybe one more for text, though I don’t remember. I also have one page for the regular woot template, and just drop the preferred color into the shirt for it, since it is only one color.
Inkscape++
For creating original designs it is generally superior. Gimp and Inkscape are in some ways complementary.
which version do you use?
as far as layers go, open this link, and there’s an arrow to the button to start new layers:
http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/1512/coreldrawscreencap.png
each layer allows you to do what you want, doesn’t have to be only one color. but for the print file, you need to separate your colors to separate layers. you can then export to an AI file, which I assume works for woot, or even an SVG file, though it loses your layers, and groups each layer as a separate group all on a single layer.
For Corel Draw Users
link to my wootshirt ‘template’ with the heathered layer:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17103342/wootshirt%20from%20most%20recent%20template%20with%20heather.cdr
link to ‘my’ wrinkled shirt ‘template’ no heather:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17103342/Wrinkled%20woot%20shirt%20template.cdr
If you want your own Dropbox, pretty handy for file storage online, and easily available for others to access the files, try this link:
This is kind of off topic but it seems that with something like this it should be stickied so everyone can read it. I don’t know what forum software Woot uses so maybe it’s not even possible.
unfortunately, i think the best they seem to be able to do is stick a link to it in tgentry’s sig. i wonder how long until it makes it there.
You know, GIMP is available as a portable app. Jus sayin