You Suck at Photoshop is a series of online Photoshop tutorials with adult-themed humor designed by Matt Bledsoe and Troy Hitch of the Big Fat Institute for Advanced Interactive Design; hosted at My Damn Channel. The show started as a one-off parody of instructional videos and became popular almost overnight; since its debut in December 2007, the first episode alone has received over 4.7 million views on YouTube, over 600,000 on My Damn Channel, and garnered national attention in Time Magazine.
Show format and subject matter
Episodes typically star fictional Photoshop user Donnie Hoyle, who demonstrates tools and techniques in Photoshop, usually on a Macintosh computer. Donnie is a person with severe and chronic personal problems relating to his job, his relationships and disintegrating marriage; various legal problems, career and emotional problems; which tend to weave themselves into the narrative to dark comedic effect. Each episode's title card is further distinguished by a different misspelling which can be interpreted as part of the joke of each episode or is spelled so as to suggest an off-color reference. Further clues to Donnie's state of mind can probably be inferred from the ever-changing desktop wallpaper seen during the demonstration.
Despite Donnie's rather intractable life problems, he does manage to demonstrate Photoshop CS3 tools and techniques, such as selecting via Color Range, Curves, and Vanishing Point.
Originally intended as a one-off series, YSAP went into a second season due to fan demand.
The series went into its second season on My Damn Channel on 27 June 2008, and ended on 31 October 2008. The series has had two spinoffs, a five-episode My Damn Channel series known as Sn4tchbuckl3r's Second Chance, and You Suck At Photoshop (TOP SECRET EDITION!), in which Donnie creates his Photoshop will.
The series restarted unofficially on 4 April 2012 with a spinoff called You Rock At Photoshop, starring Ronnie Cox. On 25 April 2012, the official start of You Suck At Photoshop started.
Awards The series was awarded two Webby awards; for Best How-To and Best Comedy Series – People's Voice. It also won the Streamy award for Best Artistic Concept in a Web Series.
Characters Donnie Hoyle (voiced by Troy Hitch) is the series' main character, tutor, and victim. Starting the series as an unhappily married man, desperately unhappy in his job as dumping manager of a waste-management company called Phebco, he relieves stress by making video tutorials of an application he is a master of – Adobe Photoshop CS3. He is so angry, though, that he cannot help but let his discontent over his strife-laden marriage, lack of accomplishment and contempt toward other people who don't know Photoshop as well show through. He suffers from self-hatred and bottled up emotions, which he tries to remedy by making tutorials. He's fighting a losing battle against his lifestyle and typically takes it out on the viewer through scornful comments and sarcasm. His friends betray him, and many plan to kill him, such as Sandy and Sn4tchbuckl3r. At the end of the second-season finale, Donnie is apparently shot by an unknown assailant.
The creators of the character have this to say about him, from their Time magazine profile:
Sn4tchbuckl3r (voiced by Matt Bledsoe) is the series' major recurring supporting character, and appears to be Donnie's closest friend and a regular co-player of World of Warcraft. He speaks with what appears to be a Hispanic accent, and both taunts Donnie and seems to also function as his only friendly contact with the world at large. His speech is characterized by what would otherwise be expletives that are cleverly replaced by similarly sounding words (e.g. What the Schmidt!) Sandy Mehglich (unvoiced) is Donnie's internet divorce-rebound love-interest, the next most important recurring character. She is a prominent plot feature in episodes 7, 8, and 9 from the first season, and 16 from the second. She was introduced to Donnie through a request to "hot-up" her Facebook picture to appeal to, as she put it, "college-boy beef loaf". Sandy is also encumbered by two adult children who were, through apparently some sort of prolonged physical abuse involving coffee and special restrictive unitards, stunted to about 65% of normal growth and attempt to make a living as semi-professional go-cart drivers, whom Sandy, out of necessity, manages. In contrast to the other characters who are known only by their voices, Sandy is only known by her (rather flawed) face, a Facebook message to Donnie and her Facebook chat session (where she was in an adjoining room) while Donnie was demonstrating brush settings in episode 16.
Additional uncredited characters include Donnie's wife (usually heard heckling him in the early episodes), and Donnie's co-workers at Phebco (heard when he had to do a couple of tutorials from his workplace after legal trouble during his divorce caused him to be locked out of his house).
Episode guide
Season One
Season One of You Suck at Photoshop was presented on My Damn Channel every other week from 21 December 2007 through 4 April 2008. It comprises 10 regular episodes and one season-ending tribute episode. Donnie's life and career trajectory during this series begin with his portrayal as a man who is both desperately unhappy in his job and his marriage, the progress of his life through his divorce and the loss of his job (whether by firing or quitting is not made clear), and his failed attempt to forge another relationship prior to his rather mysterious disappearance at the end of episode 10.
Episode One – You Suck at Photoshop: Distort, Warp and Layer Effects: Donnie uses distort and warp to paste a copy of his marriage license over the driver's side of the van in which his wife was conducting a certain infidelity. Layer effects are used to blend the license graphic so that it looks pasted on. Released 21 December 2007.Episode One – You Suck at Photoshop: Distort, Warp and Layer Effects Episode Two – You Suck at Photoshop: Covering Your Mistakes: Donnie demonstrates how to cover areas with cutting, pasting, and overlaying color, then making it look realistic with the eraser tool, demonstrating on a picture of a cat his wife rescued and now insists he care for over the weekend while she's on a business trip. Sn4tchbuckl3r appears to taunt him. Released 9 January 2008.Episode Two – You Suck at Photoshop: Covering Your Mistakes Episode Three: You Suck at Photardshop: Clone Stamp and Manual Cloning: Donnie demonstrates two ways to cover up the ring on his wife's finger, Clone Stamp and manual cloning – a technique where similar nearby areas are cut and pasted and then blended in. Released 18 January 2008.Episode Three: You Suck at Photardshop: Clone Stamp and Manual Cloning Episode Four – You Suck it Photoshop: Paths and Masks: Donnie demonstrates how to use paths to create clipping masks to simplify putting an imported graphic on a background. Released 25 January 2008.Episode Four – You Suck it Photoshop: Paths and Masks Episode Five – You Suck at Photoshops: Select Color Range: Donnie is looking forward to a vacation after "accidentally Pricelining a three-connection flight to a discount Mexican beach", and uses Select > Color Range to lift a complex object – a hammock – out of a background so that he can place it on a tropical beach graphic. His plans go for naught, however, when his supervisor informs him that he'll have to cancel his "little-man discovery trip" to go on a business trip. Misery ensues. This episode is recorded at Donnie's workplace because of apparent legal troubles over his house. Released 1 February 2008.Episode Five – You Suck at Photoshops: Select Color Range Episode Six – You Sick at Photoshop – Filter-Liquefy: Returning from his business trip, Donnie is trapped at the airport for a 96-hour layover because his boss misbooked the return. Sadly for Donnie, he is shy of public restrooms, though toward the end of the episode, Sn4tchbuckler can be heard Skyping in to encourage him to "see what Brown can do" for him. The liquefy tool is demonstrated, showing how one might gradually distort an object to enlarge it. Not for the squeamish. Released 15 February 2008.Episode Six – You Sick at Photoshop – Filter-Liquefy Episode Seven – Yo Suck At Photoshop: Patch Tool and Levels: A Donnie fan, only known as Sandy, sends Donnie her Facebook picture to "hot up", as she too has been in a divorce and needs to be "hip deep in College-boy beef loaf ASAP". Donnie demonstrates how one might use the Patch tool to fix areas and attempts to use the Levels tool to obscure Sandy's obvious flaws. Released 22 February 2008.Episode Seven – You Suck At Photoshop: Patch Tool and Levels Episode Eight – You Such a Photoshop: 3D Layers: Donnie tries to take his budding relationship with Sandy to the next level by showing her what he's willing to do to his house to welcome her and her "littlekin" sons (who are aspiring mini-car racers) to accommodate them. With 3D Layers, he's able to import a 3D model file and treat it as a maskable object in Photoshop. Released 7 March 2008.Episode Eight – You Such a Photoshop: 3D Layers Episode Nine – You Suck a Photosack: Curves: Donnie gets denied by Sandy, and uses tomatoes as a surrogate for his desires. Curves allows him to use two differently lighted images and make them look as though they belong in the same photos. Also, Sn4tchbuckl3r breaks the news to Donnie that he's out of the Horde ... he's just too surly. Released 21 March 2008.Episode Nine – You Suck a Photosack: Curves Episode Ten – You Suck At Photoshop: Vanishing Point: At the end of his rope, a placid Donnie promises "something wonderful is going to happen to you", and, in his best Dave Bowmanesque voice, shows the viewer how to use Vanishing Point to create a train big enough to take all his friends to a special place ... and then goes there on his own, mysteriously escaping the SWAT team who have come to evict him from his house. Released 4 April 2008.Episode Ten – You Suck At Photoshop: Vanishing Point Season-ending Tribute Episode – A Donnie Hoyle Tribute by Sn4tchbuckl3r: Sn4tchbuckler conference-calls with his Horde colleagues jeffb0yardee and pwnsurm0m (represented, respectively, by avatars depicting Mr. T and Ron Jeremy) and exhorts them to use Photoshop (or, maybe, the GIMP) to produce a suitable tribute to Donnie ... then dissolves the Horde. At the end of the episode we see Sn4tchbuckl3r logging into a new site: Peopleburg. This episode referred to a sidebar on the My Damn Channel site which he ostensibly "hacked" to allow download of the train track landscape seen in Episode 10 as well as a way to upload graphics as part of a Donnie tribute.Season-ending Tribute Episode – A Donnie Hoyle Tribute by Sn4tchbuckl3r
Season Two Season Two debuted on My Damn Channel on 27 June 2008, with episode No. 11, and new episodes being released once every other week on Friday. As before, Donnie is at war with his lifestyle and the results of the life choices he's made. Despite his apparent sojourn to Peopleburg (as detailed in the short series Sn4tchbuckl3r's Second Chance and the placidity of his attitude in episode No. 10, he is just as stressed and anxious as he was before. The trajectory of this season starts with a losing paternity battle, the losing of which incites Donnie to do something incredibly stupid involving Thai thumb drives and a NERF jart that invoking Stephen Baldwin can't even save him from, and an apparent cross-country flight from Ricky (aka. the guy "drilling" his wife in the Vanagon in episode 1). Sna4tchbuckl3r and Sandy make returns to the storyline.