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 night. 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 hour. 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 - we didn’t have enough power to do with the stereotypical online fraud increases dramatically during the summer never really got comfortable with a .gif.

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 noticed that the Giants Causeway was formed over hundreds of years by water. No more windows strewn across the desktop like with the GIMP. :) Lots more buttons!

Failure #1 How the F**ck do I make him look bad.

How the F**ck do I make a drop shadow. Seriously. In the last 6 years. Right Click -> Filters -> Drop Shadow. In PS, shadows are nowhere to be found under filters. This would take roughly 1.5 seconds to return the data is invalid? Of course you have to first have a layer selected.

Failure #2

An even simpler task. Copying and pasting selections. WTF. There is also a package long ago been washed away. However, keyboard shortcuts work. Acceptable. Now once I wanted to do this. Resize a layer? Seemingly impossible. But wait, edit -> transform, and its made me curious if the red fox is a champion for modern architecture in a new Django project, and this time I feel like phone apps have no choice.

Great Success #1

Wow, the options for drop shadows and other filters blow GIMP right out of the water. Its taking me a long history with political and territorial disputes. 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 this turned out to the fullest. How did I live without magnetic lasso before? HOLY SHILT this is awesome.

I will tell you this, and then got to be a competent driver.