How to be Good at Photoshop While Actually Being Terrible at Photoshop

(pictured (top) Using the Manimal Jeff Long to promote the upcoming Fantasy Softball Season. (middle) Mike "All Day" Schwakopf lookin' fierce in Vikings purple. (bottom) Chris McGrath and Brian "Beeker" Pollack show the rich tradition and history of our softball team)

I get a lot of credit for being "good" at Photoshop. In reality, I'm actually pretty terrible at Photoshop. Most people who have spent as much time as I have in a serious design program tend to pick up skills that translate into cool jobs that actually make money. Overachieving losers, amirite?!

The one thing that I can do pretty well inside of this marvelous Adobe product is put people's faces in situations that are nonsensical or ironic. Just classic Humor 101 stuff, really.

I could teach you the methods that I use to make this happen, like using a quick mask or the extract feature, but that's pretty boring. There are thousands of free tutorials online that do the same thing. There's some pretty funny vids out there from a site called "You Suck at Photoshop" that you should look up if you're interested.

What I've found to be much more important than the actual execution of merging two unlike pictures is the driving force behind the idea. You need to have a clear concept in your head of what you're going to do and why you're going to do it.

Now, I can't teach you to be funny. If I could, maybe I'd actually enjoy reading your status updates on Facebook. But what I can do is encourage you to try. You don't actually need Photoshop to tweak images. You can use Microsoft Paint which will produce jagged edges and a third-grade look for your final product. That can be hilarious. Sometimes the worse the final product looks the better.

So here's to all the people out there who've been using Microsoft Word for 20 years and can't do a mail merge, Microsoft Excel for 10 years and can't write a formula, and Adobe Photoshop but think layers are what you take apart to eat a Nutty Bar.