Just got back from holidays yesterday. I'm sorry I missed the rest of the competition, but I checked out the final entries and a lot of them look terrific. Hopefully I can join in the next competition and get a final entry in.

Taquion, I have tried out Gimp, and it looks pretty good. I'm more familiar with Photoshop Elements though, so I'll probably stick with that until I have time to learn some of the more powerful tools of Gimp or Photoshop CS(3 or 4 or something). I'll try out the channel box rotation too.
Arran, thanks for the comments.