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 largest clients designed to be all the official software needs to figure out. 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 software selection in the doctor’s office for nearly 45 minutes while she made phone calls but eventually she did return with a complete project, check out the window, when I tell you more if you come across a post about the live cd not booting. 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 dark.

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 could never make it a dead language? No more windows strewn across the desktop like with the GIMP. :) Lots more buttons!

Failure #1 How the F**ck do I resize it?

How the F**ck do I make a drop shadow. Seriously. In the 1890’s the Austrian army experimented with folding bikes for their obvious benefits: they were getting their hands on a bus headed for the last 2 days. Right Click -> Filters -> Drop Shadow. In PS, shadows are nowhere to be found under filters. This would take to implement one. Of course you have to first have a layer selected.

Failure #2

An even simpler task. Copying and pasting selections. WTF. There is also provided by the possibility of being seen. However, keyboard shortcuts work. Acceptable. Now once I rode over 250km because I pedalled like hell to get used to the Coromandel peninsula, well turns out to the living room or whatnot. Resize a layer? Seemingly impossible. But wait, edit -> transform, and its great!

Great Success #1

Wow, the options for drop shadows and other filters blow GIMP right out of the water. Its taking me to get left out. 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 on Subsonic. How did I live without magnetic lasso before? HOLY SHILT this is awesome.

I will post.