I get free lunch if I'm at the right place at the right time. And have any of you in this thread used GIMP? It's a powerful program just like Photoshop. If you don't know how it works, you won't access the full potential.
You can use Adobe CS4 free for a month (Photohop, Illustrator, Indesign etc), just download the trials from the Adobe Website. They are by far the best design tools and worth the investment if you will be using them a lot.