Working with Photoshop

Well let me just start off by saying I took a photoshop class years ago and never used it much, so I lost it.  I recently found some amazing templates and started playing around with them (a project that will later be revealed)...and had a really hard time getting it to work...let's just say I spent over 4 hours trying to follow a simple tutorial, that just didn't seem so simple.  Well I finally got it and completed quite a few layouts.  Tonight I piddled with a few more.  These only took about 5 minutes a piece...so I guess I have worked the kinks out of clipping masks!  WHEW!!!