Mac Update: My Experience Learning PhotoShop CS3

In my ongoing efforts to train myself both on the Mac and with Adobe CS3, I assigned myself a project.  Arising from a discussion on Facebook, I decided to create an image of a good book burning. Naturally, I'd pick books from the likes of Sean Hannity, Laura Schlessinger, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Jonah Goldberg, Bill O'Reilly, Karl Rove and the like.  First, I had to find an image of a bonfire:

Then, I needed some images of books.  So far, so good, so easy. Although, I must say, doing this in Corel Photo-Paint X3 (my self-taught image editor of choice) is more intuitive for me.  With Corel, all I have to do when I find an online image is press Ctrl+C to copy it, then in Corel press Ctrl+Shift+N to open the new image.  In PhotoShop, I can't find the "paste new image" feature, so I saved each online image and opened them in PhotoShop.

Next, I had to mask each book to remove its background.  This is something I learned over the years in Corel through trial and error.  While the tools in PhotoShop are similar, I found that it was nowhere near as intuitive, and nowhere near as fast. I'll concede that I did not use tutorials or a "For Dummies" book.  I just tried to figure it out myself, something that has served me well in Corel.  Clearly, I may have to get a "how to" book after all (and man I hate following instructions!).

Next, I had to paste each masked book onto the bonfire, and then size, rotate and skew them to make it look like they're scattered around.  This caused much frustration. In Photo-Paint, selecting, skewing and changing individual pasted objects is child's play. . .simple and easy.  In PhotoShop, I found that I had to navigate menus, palettes, right-clicks and layers.  It was excruciatingly frustrating.  Applying changes vexed me, and I found the only way to easily accomplish the task was to change tools, and wait for the "apply changes?" prompt.

After playing around with all of these images for close to two hours, this is the result I came up with:

Final image, created on Mac PowerBook with PhotoShop
(Click to embiggen)

It's pretty much what I was going for, but looks like what it is: a bunch of pasted books in front of a bonfire.  After all the time I spent, I was disappointed.  And I wanted a better image for the blog.  So, I came into the PC I'm so much more familiar with, opened Corel Photo-Paint, and started from scratch. Well, almost scratch.  I found that I can semi-successfully network the Mac to the PC (it's inconsistent, and does not work as easily as all the "switching to Mac" books say it is), so all of my original images could be imported without looking for them again.

I opened each book image, and the bonfire. In Photo-Paint, I re-masked all the books, pasted them into the bonfire image, rotated, skewed and sized them.  I brushed out some of the edges of the book to let the background peek through. I added flames with the image sprayer tool.  In short, I got a much better, much more realistic image, and I completed it in about 15 minutes!

Final image created in Corel Photo-Paint on my PC
(Click to embiggen)

Now, I'm not saying that either image is a masterpiece. My intent wasn't for extreme photo-realism, just basically a political cartoon.  I spend enough time on the computer as it is, and most of my created-for-blog images are quickies.  But so far, this process is so much easier and faster on my PC, I can already tell that teaching myself Adobe CS3 on the Mac is going to be an arduous slog.

Screen Shot of Mac Desktop During Project

Part of the problem is the whole layout of each program, and the fact that I've gotten so used to the Microsoft Windows way of doing things. That, and the fact that Corel has such dynamic, easy-to-use tools.  In Corel, every tool you pick opens a dynamic toolbar, with all settings available at your fingertips.  Adobe uses palettes (which Corel has if you want them, but they dock nicely to the edge of the screen, and stay out of your way), which litter the screen, and distract my eye.  Also, Windows programs can be zoomed to full-screen, blotting out all other open programs.  Each program can take sole focus, acting as a container for only what you're working on.  On the Macintosh, windows overlap, with no containing boundary.  So, if you have a web browser open, it is visible under all of your Adobe palettes, your open image window, everything.

Windows 7 Sceen Shot During Project

This clutter hurts my brain, and frustrates me no end. I'm sure there are second-nature cures for much of this (if you're a seasoned Mac user), but making all of that go away is not intuitive.  And I'll bet there isn't a Mac setting to put a containing window behind all of those palettes.  If you look at my two screen shots here, you can see an example of the clutter on the Mac, and the nice, open, clean workspace on the PC.  But it goes beyond that really.  What I want is a feature that Corel has had for years.  If you're an Adobe user crossing over to Corel, you can quickly change the layout to emulate Adobe, lickety-split.  The whole layout changes to look just like you were using PhotoShop (or Illustrator, if you're using CorelDraw).  Adobe could give the Corel-using artist an enormous leg up by returning the favor.

So, my self tutelage continues. It is clear that I'm going to need to get some lesson-teaching books if I don't want to go crazy.  But that in itself is gonna drive me nuts.  I'm too many years along to be learning my ABCs and 123s.  Imagine wanting to learn algebra, but being forced to start with 1st-grade addition and subtraction, and working your way up.  Ugh.  This is not as fun as I thought it would be.