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 me over the last 5 or 6 years and I have no complaints. 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 way, I refuse to RTFM. 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 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 really like, everything is in one container window. No more windows strewn across the desktop like with the GIMP. :) Lots more buttons!

Failure #1

How the F**ck do I make a drop shadow. Seriously. In the GIMP, it was so simple. Right Click -> Filters -> Drop Shadow. In PS, shadows are nowhere to be found under filters. This would take me a long time to figure out, but eventually it was discovered in a seemingly dark, creepy corner of the PS menu system: Layer-> Layer Style -> Drop Shadow. Of course you have to first have a layer selected.

Failure #2

An even simpler task. Copying and pasting selections. WTF. There is no right click copy/cut and paste. However, keyboard shortcuts work. Acceptable. Now once I have something pasted, how do I resize it? 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 a while to get the hang of just managing everything, but I’ll soon catch up to what I could do in the GIMP. 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 I’m already in love. How did I live without magnetic lasso before? HOLY SHILT this is awesome.

I will update this post as I learn more about my new Photoshop.