By: Brent Greenberg
Wow... That might have been the most stressful 2 hours of my life trying to figure out photoshop. It may be the most user-unfriendly program I have ever used. My first day was hell and it was only fitting when I got into my car to go home, Hells Bells by AC/DC came on the radio.
My first idea to start and learn Photoshop was to do one of the best 50 tutorials on the tech blog Hongkiat creating a stencil banner. But that turned out to be a big failure because the tutorial was terrible. It gave very little instruction on what tools you needed and where to find them. It used pictures which were decent but they only gave a screenshot of the end screen. There were no arrows pointing to what you needed to click on. So essentially you had to figure most of it out on your own anyway. After about 25 minutes of being stuck on the same issue of creating an oval and making it show the background behind an image, I gave up.
Then my second idea was from Planet Photoshop where I would create a word in a given background (I chose a lacrosse field) and the word would have different designs in it. Let’s just say this one didn’t work because of the difficulty to put the designs in the image. And after about 30 minutes of struggling through that, I gave up.
And my last idea of the night was to do something productive for my job and create a graphic. I’m a press and communications intern with the non-profit Shootout for Soldiers. In this graphic, I would promote the Shootout for Soldiers event in Baltimore and thought it would be cool to make the images 3D and use shadows for effect. This is what I have so far. I added the logo and the word Baltimore
It is much easier to see on my computer than on this screenshot. This was difficult because for some reason, the move tool wouldn’t work and I probably spent about 20 minutes trying to move the word “Baltimore” from that bottom line up to under the Shootout for Soldiers logo.
Let’s just say those past two hours were the most stressful I’ve had at Mount Union and it might be because I’m used to picking up skills quickly. Whether its Microsoft Office, different social media platforms, or just some school assignment, nothing has taken this long for me to learn. Hopefully by my next post the graphic will be done and I can show it off to the public. So if you see it on Twitter before Thursday, I finished!
The immediate purpose is for the blogger to learn how to use Photoshop. I appreciate the links given to the more and less useful advice sights, but I was wondering if there would be advice given from this blog specifically. I was also wondering what the goal was moving forward. Is this supposed to be an advice blog? Or a compilation of better and better Photoshop projects?
ReplyDeleteAs someone that regularly struggles with technology, I completely relate. You make it clear early on that your blog is chronicling your struggles with Photoshop, and your use of hyperlinks are helpful. The frustration throughout your post also made it clear that you are new at this, and it was really effective in showing your purpose. My only minor quibble was that for some readers may not know Photoshop is a part of Adobe PhotoSuite.
ReplyDeleteI think your purpose is clear in that you are writing about your personal struggles so readers who may be in the same boat can read, relate, and learn from your mistakes that you'll be documenting. Writing in such a personal style is a good way to get readers to connect with your writing and stay interested.
ReplyDeleteI like your first post! Initially it felt a little too negative: if I was someone who had been reading the blog before I started using Photoshop, I might have given up before I even started lol. But I 100% understand that technology is stressful, and it definitely feels good to commiserate with other people who share your struggles. I like that you included a graphic!
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