Photoshop a.k.a the bane of my existence

Recently Jon and I acquired Photoshop cs4... the mack daddy of them all. And it is 100% NOT user friendly. Seriously.... just when you think you might have it a little bit figured out, you are not even close. at all. Now I usually pick up on things pretty quickly and can figure things out given a little time. But this program has stumped me so many times and has really humbled my "can do" attitude. Buuuuuuut after a lot more tweaking, reading/watching 50 million tutorials and video tutorials I think I figured out how to use about 2% of the program. which is a start. So here are a few of my before and afters. Now remember I am in no way shape or form great at this, let alone mediocre. But I do like how some of these shots turned out after.

Now I know I probably could've done this on a regular old editing program, but that's not the point. And I will figure out how to do "cooler" stuff on it, I promise.

I LOVE that you can add texture to photos gives it a little something extra.

Now in the spirit of full disclosure I will say it took me a good 2 hours to upload this last photo. I couldn't figure out why in the world it wouldn't upload. I changed the dimensions, I tweaked just about everything I could to get the size down and still it wouldn't work! Then I realized it wasn't saved in jpg. Which quite honestly pissed me off. The other edited one automatically saved in jpg so why wouldn't the second one!? Oh photoshop... just when I think I have you figured out you throw me another curve ball. I WILL learn to use this program and I WILL conquer all... or at least (hopefully) have some snazzy pictures at the end of it all!

That's all for now. Any help, photo tips, encouragement please send my way. My sanity and the livelihood of my computer needs it :)