The old dog has to learn a new trick!

I need to learn how to edit in Photoshop, and my proficiency level is rock-base bottom.

‘Why?’ are you asking? Well I’ll get into that in a moment.

I’ve written extensively recently about the quality of my book covers… or it is not that so much. They were excellent book covers in their day between five and ten years ago, but now they look a little jaded, old-fashioned even.

So, as I have written before, I have started to commission new book covers, and the firm that I have chosen also sends a ‘master’ in Photoshop format. This is perfect for me, because many of my books have been translated, so ‘all’ I have to do is change the text for the cover design of the translation.

Herein lies the rub. My Photoshop Proficiency is zero, and, I don’t even have the Photoshop application, which is rather expensive, I think.

An Alternative to Photoshop

Well, there is a fix for not having Photoshop; Gimp is a free alternative. However, both Gimp and Photoshop seem horrendously difficult to learn from where I am now.

Perhaps, I could get the book cover editing done on Fiverr, but something tells me that it is better to learn how to make the changes myself.

So, that’s what I’m going to do. I reckon that it will take at least a week to get my Photoshop proficiency up to the level necessary for photo editing, but so be it. You can find examples of my efforts on this blog. Click ‘Foreign Translations’ in the title bar and choose a language or book title.

GIMP

Update: I have spent a week learning Gimp now, and I haven’t even scratched the surface of its capabilities. There is so much mouse work! You have to click an are to select it, then click a function to bring up first-level options; then click on a ‘topic’ to bring up more options, and so on until you find the function you want. This is sort of to be expected, but it is really difficult to remember which functions are three or four levels below a top-level word.

There is no way that I will be able to learn Photoshop or Gimp in a month… six months is probably closer to the mark.