Playing with photoshop

Eric is the master at Photoshop from his years of working on graphic design for the newspaper. I haven't had the courage to navigate the program as it seems rather daunting. So, I decided to challenge myself and conquer this program over the summer. This is my first attempt, with the before and after. Unfortunately, I have no idea what I did as I played with every imaginable button but I've got 3 months...I'll figure it out!