Recently converted from Photoshop because lol poverty, and decided to dive in and see if I could do the basic things here that I used to do in that program. I almost instantly hit a brick wall, though I'm going to assume it's just my unfamiliarity with the program. Also, I'm "self-taught" so I'm just an idiot pressing buttons and don't know the proper terms for anything.

What I want to do seems super simple: Make a selection. That's it. In Photoshop I would go to the Pen tool, make my little outline using curves and such, and then right-click to "make selection" or "convert to selection." Anything I had outlined on that layer would then become selected, and I could invert my selection and erase backgrounds. I can see how to create masks and erase backgrounds, but it's all freehand brushes. I'm using a cartoon-style image, so I have solid lines I could easily follow with a pen tool to remove the background that I don't want, and it would be a much cleaner process than doing it all by hand.

I tried looking up selections in the manual, but I think it must be called something different, because it basically just explained moving and rotating the image. I also tried the "Shape Tool" which looks like the correct tool, but all I could get it to do was draw lines, and after I had drawn too many it would break into a few dozen little red points and I couldn't see the line I was even drawing anymore. Even if I made a basic shape, it still just created that shape with no way to actually select what was within the boundaries of the shape.

Needless to say, I'm lost and I haven't even left the starting gate.