7 years ago, while working for Indiana University as a Helpdesk tech, i was introduced to photoshop. in high school my friend Jarrod and I used MSpaint to design tshirts! mostly for fun (and to be funny) but we actually made some money with it selling shirts we designed and printed to friends! our largest order was for a local dog kennel where we both worked. We ended up making around 30 tshirts!
when photoshop and I first met, i was scared of it. at the time the most current version was photoshop CS. even though it looked daunting to learn, i saw what could be done and wanted desperately to duplicate those awesome pics you see where people transpose their heads onto animals, or onto the body of a supermodel! For a person to learn photoshop, it’s recommended to have some experience with editing tools of some kind. MSpaint by the way, is NOT a graphic design tool… i dove in head first and was determined to figure everything out!
I don’t remember much of the learning process, except that i worked with a guy that was also an art student at IU. he was mainly into 3d art (using tools like maya) and focused on designing video game environments, but he was a beast at photoshop! i asked him a lot of questions and probably annoyed the crap out of him, but after some time i started replacing body parts like a pro!
one of my first “projects” when learning photoshop, was to put my cat “Waldo” in a tux and name him my best man for our wedding! so i took a pic with my sanyo flip phone, swiped some tux pictures from the internet and got to work!
Meet Waldo before photoshop...
Waldo "shopped"
as you can see, pretty epic stuff here… unfortunately Waldo wasn’t able to be my best man for the wedding, he had other obligations…
after my success, i thought i was Photoshop master, and could successfully replace anyone’s head on anyone’s body! the more i played in photoshop, the more i learned and understood what it was capable of. I looked forever to find some of my beginning work to display (if only for comparisons sake) but waldo was the only one i could find 
i’ll keep looking though!
my first big “productive” project was to design everything for our wedding. i designed and printed (but as stated earlier, i cannot find anything) the programs, invitations, and a slideshow video that played during the wedding.
<sarcasm> clearly file organization and backups are important to me, maybe i should do a blog post on how to keep track of your crap! </sarcasm>
Today all the work i do design wise is practical. ok 98% of it 
here’s a few examples of some fairly recent stuff. (click the image to see it full size)
A banner for Ron Martin's "A Fool's Utopia" blog on 411Mania.com
Made for De Novo. an aspiring DJ
T-Shirt made for my sister's Dental Hygiene class
Kierra's "mascot" for her 1st birthday party!
My fantasy football team logo
Logo for the old Impulse Ministries youth group
you’ve already seen my most recent work! (the “stuff Tyler likes” banner)
my current running version is CS5 extended. the versions have kept photoshop pretty much the same over the years. it’s seen a few graphical changes, menu changes and tool additions. although i’ve never tried, adobe has recently added 3d support. The upgrade i use most in day to day design is “content-aware”. i would have killed this for back in the day… Content-aware is extremely useful for touching up areas where you might want to remove something from a picture. for example take the following picture:
the shot is PERFECT, except a stupid bird landed just as the shutter clicked… no worries! Content-aware fill makes quick work of the bird removal!
stupid bird!
no more bird!
to accomplish this, i only had to draw around the bird with the selection tool, press shift + F5 (cmd +F5 on mac), select content-aware and press ok! Photoshop does all the work! Before this feature existed, you would have to use the healing brush and carefully paint over the area of the bird using the surrounding picture as the source. it’s not very precise and takes a long time to make look right… if only all of life’s problems could go away with a few key strokes!!!
learning photoshop has proved to be very useful over the years! had i not learned, who would have made me a logo featuring a tenderloin? if you’re interested in learning, i highly recommend the training video series from lynda.com. i wish i knew about it when i was first starting out!!
hope you enjoyed the post as much as i enjoyed reminiscing about days of old!
Tyler
You sir, are rather awesome.
no, YOU are awesome!
Ahh, MS Paint – I may be on a design course but sometimes it is Just Easier (and quicker to load!!!) I mainly use Illustrator for very vector-based work, so the things Photoshop can do still amaze me whenever I see them – Just where is that bird!!!!
I’ve not used illustrator much. Most of my projects haven’t required much vector art, and when it does i usually manage with Photoshop! If you are looking for a lighter weight alternative to photoshop, i highly recommend GIMP. it’s free, open source, cross-platform design software. It may not be as powerful as PS but still a million times better than MS paint!!
I have luckily got a much faster computer now but I’ll still check that out, thank you!