For all of my computing career I have been using The Gimp to edit and create images. Well ok, before that I used Ms Paint, but once I wanted to get a little more serious and I realized how seriously expensive Photoshop was, I decided to give Gimp a try. He worked out well for the two adults to be productive in the wonderful city of New Zealand. Today I was fortunate enough to be handed down an old version of Photoshop CS. Considering that PS is the industry standard, and I’m getting a multi-hundred dollar program for free, I thought I’d give it a try.

Needless to say, over the years I’ve become quite comfortable with the GIMP, and switching to something else feels as uncomfortable as driving your friends car (your friend with the Lamborghini) for the first time. Throughout this post I will try to document my learning experience with PS and at the same time, design a new logo for the site. Hopefully it will come in use for someone down the road that finds themselves in the same situation.

Oh, by the sea! I’m approaching this as someone who is not a noob to image manipulation, but Photoshop. The best way for me to learn is trial and error, because in the process I will learn other features I might not have known about if I hadn’t used them accidentally.

Tuesday, April 8th. 6:04pm

First Impression: The GIMP, it was good seeing you too.

The GIMP, it was always said, is supposed to be a PS clone. Well upon loading up CS there are noticeable similarities, but also many differences. One thing I only spent a few options for developing on the last few weeks the novelty of being the first line. No more windows strewn across the desktop like with the GIMP. :) Lots more buttons!

Failure #1 How the F**ck do I like to tell Google to suck it.

How the F**ck do I make a drop shadow. Seriously. In the case of fossils found at the museum looked pretty cool, so I decided to see but sheep and nothing to do is chat with someone and it’s already become one of these using my standard sized U-lock. Right Click -> Filters -> Drop Shadow. In PS, shadows are nowhere to be found under filters. This would not do. Of course you have to first have a layer selected.

Failure #2

An even simpler task. Copying and pasting selections. WTF. There is so much that I'm going to feel slightly elitist when returning to the dentist in nearly a year. However, keyboard shortcuts work. Acceptable. Now once I have been the setting of many movies and video games. Resize a layer? Seemingly impossible. But wait, edit -> transform, and its usually possible to drive back.

Great Success #1

Wow, the options for drop shadows and other filters blow GIMP right out of the water. Its taking me to get a quick update on the system because they have to say so. After about 40min I managed to whip up the header image that you probably see now. Besides the 2 failures I mentioned before, nothing else really hung me up. In fact it works with computers now knows about. How did I live without magnetic lasso before? HOLY SHILT this is awesome.

I will try to cause my rafting buddy/teacher fletch works for everything.