Photoshop takes time to learn lol. I was doing the same thing when I first started learning it when I first came a graphic designer for myspace doing it just as a hobby I used photofiltre then leaned towards photoshop once I learned the basics of editing photos creating gifs from cruddy websites that do it for you. It helped me A LOT! Because then I knew already what all the tools were used for like the poloygon, lasso etc... After learning all of it Photoshop wasn't as intimating to me.
Once I started using Photoshop it was still very frustrating and different to use then Photofiltre, so what I did was I went on youtube looked up photoshop tutorials, because those books for dummies instantly gave me a headache trying to figure out what they are talking about.
So my best word of advice for you is to start off with Photofiltre like I did for a few weeks to understand the basics. Then go to Photoshop and start making gifs and when you get stuck search youtube, I know youtube was my best friend when I was using Photoshop. Also Photoshop cs2 was my favorite doesn't take up a lot of space on your computer and works just like cs3 pretty much. But if you are going to be doing this as a career I would use Photoshop CS4 as it's what the PROS use.
This is the best way to do it ALL on your own. I made pro looking GIFS in the first week of learning photoshop by learning the basics first and easing my way into it. I was very proud of myself.
