Problems with my Digital Recreation

I had a rough start with my first project. It seemed as if everything I learned last semester was completely erased from memory. I couldn't figured out how to laso my background photo in photoshop within a new layer, and I had a very difficult time remembering many solutions to simple problems such as these. I probably spent approximately 5 to 6 hours actually just troubleshooting my project of these issues before I actually getting to the meat of my project and wrapping things up. I am hoping that I don't have this problem again in future projects. I didn't have my finished project in the gif as I would have liked it to have been, but I can always go back and get it just the way I like later.