My suggestion is find some tutorials around here that'll show you some tricks/techniques/etc. and do some real-life studies. And yes, practice is definitely rewarding in the long run. You just have to have fun while doing it.

If you've only played around with Photoshop a little bit, try experimenting with it some more to get the hang of it. It takes time to learn a complicated program, that's understandable. You get better eventually when you know your way around it.

Hope this helps.