Did you ever start a class feeling like everyone else had been meeting for a couple weeks behind your back? Starting out with Photoshop gave me flashbacks to freshman calculus where the engineering students in the front row constantly jumped out of their seats to correct the flustered grad student T.A.

If you’re just starting with Photoshop (I mean just starting) or if you’ve managed to eek out projects, but feel like you’re getting by with luck and guessing, then this Friday Fundamentals installment is for you. It features a video from Deke’s new course at lynda.com, Introducing Photoshop, called “Understanding selections and layers.” And it’s chock full of basic Photoshop concepts that a beginner might overlook in their overwhelmed-ness.

In this movie, you’ll get a quick background on, well, the Background (which is technically not a layer), actual layers, and how to make a simple selection (the blue ball-face above) and stash it on a layer. These are all critical concepts to understand, especially when you’re using Photoshop in the service of graphical design. Try it out. It may answer those questions you missed when we all secretly got together without you during the summer.

If you’d like to see more of the course, or recommend it to a friend who might benefit, you can get a free week’s trial at lynda.com/deke.