Need advice on shirt printing/designing

Just looking to see whats involved with something like this...I know nothing about printing, I know nothing about designing...Of course like every mini trucker on here..I do have ideas...Im assuming I would need Photoshop or atleast some kind of program to atealst TRY to design something...Anyone can make a shirt with nothing but words on it..And anyone can cut and paste a picture. A design or image it what sells a shirt though and makes it worth looking at IMO...Ive never attempted anything like this, so if anyone could give some advice id appreciate it...All of this would be for personal use, Im not looking to start my own business or anything...I could always go to Nick @ Surface or Graphic Disorder and get something done..Again, this is just something im looking to bullshit around with and see if its something I should attempt or not.

Are you looking to do everything yourself? Screen printing isnt just something you can pick up easy and not to mention its expensive. But for programs Illustrator would be your best bet. It is a fun process though to do it all yourself if you have the proper tools. Just making sure you dont get ahead of yourself.

if you want a free program like photoshop do a search for gimp

You will need a vector based program to design correctly for printing.  If you are printing full color shirts you will need photoshop and either understand colors very well or have a rip program to bust them up correctly.   Your best best is to get photoshop and illustrator and start there.   If your trying to print your own stuff, you could start with Ebay knock off presses that will be slow, not accurate, and hard to make any money with, but you could do that for around 2-3k by the time you get all the stuff you need.   You will also learn quickly that screen printing is a time consuming process.  People often think you just click print thats all you have to do to get a shirt.  They never understand there could be hours of set up depending on what your printing. 

^^ Basically just get brandt to do it. LOL

Lol..Yea thats what it comes down to, I think ill leave the printing up to someone else..Design seems to be a little more of what im interested in for sure..I read up on Illustrator and vector designing also checked out some videos of people actually using the program..Im starting to realize this is a little more complex than I had imagined..Photoshop/Gimp seems to be more along the lines of something id be able to LEARN with..Maybe over time I can step up once im able to better understand everything..Thanks for all the help.

ya just do a bunch of tutorials and you should be able to learn the basics pretty fast.