Adobe Photoshop CS2 One-on-One

So... I've started trying to learn Photoshop. One of the how-to books that I bought is called Adobe Photoshop CS2 One-on-One by Deke McCelland. I'm learning soooo much!

First lesson was on the Bridge part. I found out that I can add copyright info and keywords and rename all of my photos. Very, very cool. It'll take me hours and hours to update all of my digital photos with all of that info, but it's something I definitely want to do.

I'm sort of dragging my feet through some of this. The next two chapters were on "Highlights, Midtones and Shadows" and then "Correcting Color Balance." I can't see colors very well for Chapter 3, and I didn't understand much of Chapter 2 because the sample photos I got to work with looked just fine to me!

I'm on Lesson 4 now. It's on "Making Selections" which I REALLY needed to learn. I could get the marching ants, but I never knew how to make them go away (Ctrl-D). So far, I've taken a scarecrow and put it into the foreground of a farmhouse photo then blurred the farmhouse to make it look more realistic; next I moved a moon onto a red sky, then added all that to a picture of a road--then I turned the whole picture red for some reason (I wasn't really sure about why I did that part); and finally, I'm adding the picture of a courthouse to a picture of some fireworks. That last part is really cool, however, I'm also supposed to add a gradient to the courthouse so that it's darker at the top and lighter at the bottom, but it has some reddish highlights that simulate it being lit by fireworks.

All of those Lesson 4 projects are GREAT! However, I don't have ANY concept of photographic composition/realism, and I don't know what looks realistic and what doesn't! He said I can skip to the next lesson if the composite photo looks good enough to me. I'm afraid I'm going to miss something essential, though, so I don't want to skip anything!

I'm going to keep plugging away at it; I'm determined to learn how this stinking software works!