I've got the mini-app downloaded, and unzipped, but I do not understand what to do next. Could you tell me what steps I need to do? Thanks

You're welcome. I tried it just now myself, it might take some adjusting of values to get it to look the way you want. Let me know if it works for you.

I found a tutorial in one of my school books on how to make fireworks. I havn't tried it yet, but the examples in the book look good. Here it goes:
First show your brushes palette.
Select a simple round tipped brush.
Then select SHAPE DYNAMICS on the brushes palette, set jitter to about 45%, set control to FADE with a value of about 200, set your minumim diameter to 1%, set angle jitter to 100%, and control set to OFF, set roundness jitter to 40%, control to FADE at a value of 75, set your minumim roundness to 50%. After that has been done, select SCATTERING from the left side of your brushes menu, Set your Scatter to about 90%, with control OFF, adjust your Count to about 2, and your Count Jitter to about 80%, control OFF. Ok now we are almost finished with our brush. Select TEXTURE from the left side of the brushes palette. They suggest using Satin with a scale of about 65%, with a blending mode of Color Burn at 100% opacity. Finally just select your color and paint away. I hope this helps you and is easy enough to follow :P. When I get some more time, I'll try it out myself and post my results here.

Ok, maybe I should check my email before I post. hehe. The brushes you sent me are just what I need. You are an angel!

Ahh, thank you so much! Those brushes are pretty good. I am still in need of a larger bubble brush, perhaps one that makes a large single bubble. (I am still using OS 9 here. The school needs to get off their behinds and upgrade our systems. :P) I appreciate the help very much.

Thanks so much for the link but when I click on the link to download, it won't start a download. I am sure it is b/c I am using a Mac, and I'm not quite what I need to do to make it work. I sent you an email Hoof...thanks for your help.

I would have the text on a seperate layer, above the photo, or other image. Go to blending options, and change the fill to 0%. This will make your text disappear. Then adjust the bevel and emboss, and drop shadow until you get the look you want. Remember to adjust the fill and not the opacity, when you change the opacity it effects all of your effects and makes them transparent as well. Hope that helps, if you need a more detailed explantion let me know.

I take it you are using a Mac...the best way to do it is to go into your system folder and find Photoshop and then the Prefrences folder. Trash that folder (don't forget to empty the trash)and re-open Photoshop. This will work for any new document you start after, but if you are currently working on something I believe it will keep whatever prefrences that were saved along with it. Hope that helps. I share a Mac at school with several others, my preferences are always messed up. I have learned to do this before I start any new document.

Thanks for the link dreamer, I'll give that a try this afternoon and see if its close to what I'm after.

that would be right, forgive my spelling :P

I'm not sure how to do it with a brush, but you can take a selected area, (can be solid color) and go to Sketch >Graphic Pen. Select left diagonal. This will give you hatch lines, but in one direction only. To create your crosshatch, just repeat steps and select righ diagonal this time. Hope that helps.

From my experience, when you are using the quick mask mode to select an object, paint what you want to KEEP not delete. When you delete what was painted it will leave the shadow you are talking about. When you paint the object you want to keep, when your object to remove is selected, it should clear, back to the grid, or white. I don't know if this fixes your problem, but it was the only thing I know of that would cause that shadow to appear like that.

Your logo looks really good. I would suggest ajusting the kern (space between letters) around the second "N" in entertainment. The kerning is very tight throughout the word, except around the "N." That would help achieve a more polished look. I hope that helps a little.

I agree that both Classroom in a book for Photoshop and Illustrator are helpful. The Classroom in a Book series is definetly the place to start. I also have both Bible's. These books enable you to grasp the full use of your software, but they are not written for the newest users. They are very large books and cover just about everything imaginable. They are wonderful books after you get down the basics.