But that's my problem. I don't know the right questions to ask. Like I ultimately want to be able to create custom logos for people in the freelancer forum. I had a logo created for me there last year and it made me want to pursue this. So I guess that's my question.
So lemme ask. How would I go about creating a custom logo say from someone in the freelancer forum?
See what I mean?.... If you didn't go ahead and ask the most obvious of questions, you wouldn't get to know the answer. The best thing here is you got 4 comments from 4 individuals for the price of one guru with probably more on the way with an advise or 2 to chip in for you.....
You've heeded their excellent advises. That's good...... but I'd just like to add a bit more to the logic behind IamSam's Illustrator suggestion.....
This is and may forever be an area of great debate among most designers - What application is the best to use when creating a logo -- Photoshop or Illustrator (or other vector-based applications)?
Not that I want to bring the debate to PSG but .....
ILLUSTRATOR or other vector applications like Corel Draw, is in my opinion, the appropriate tool to use when creating logos.... or any layout design for that matter. And it's for 2 reasons -
1 - It saves you from the trouble or minimizes the trouble of editing later iterations (version changes) of the work.
For example - In Photoshop, you edit objects by first selecting the object on the layer (ALT+click layer), convert the selection to a work path so you can manipulate the anchor points, convert back to path and use the eraser or invert selection to delete unneeded parts or create a new layer and color fill the selection. You may also opt to use the eraser or other tools (transform tools, warp or pen tool, most likely) to direct edit the original shape in the first place. But in most instances, slight warping, deletion or erasure affects the shape's original quality. It would be better to simply discard the old one and create the new shape on the layer - you maintain the quality.
This is not the case in a vector apps. Depending on what application you're using, you might simply have to double the click the logo or shape within the logo to bring out the path anchor points and proceed with the edit - the color or fill will adjust to the edited shape and quality is maintained. In most cases, nothing may need to be discarded or deleted even if you need to do a major over-haul.
2 - (which is most precious) You can re-scale, transform, warp or rotate your creation without losing quality whatsoever. Be it numerously resized as big as an elephant or tiny as a pea, the object will remain true to it's shape, details and color. You can constantly resize to view the work as how it would look in various sizes during stages of editing rather than repeatedly zoom in and zoom out...
Some will say - "Create the image in the highest resolution possible". This works, no doubt. But in doing so you end up with a huge file size. The file size of a complex design done in a vector application can surprisingly be much, much smaller in file size considering the complexity, size or resolution settings of it's contents as compared to one done in PS.
I'm not saying that Photoshop can't be used to create a logo. But I will rather say that you can use Photoshop to
finalize the work most especially if you need to incorporate it with or into other elements.
This is done by copying and pasting or IMPORT your logo into Photoshop as a "SMART OBJECT" . This will ensure (or at least minimize) no loss of scalable quality.
Photoshop and Illustrator works hand in hand........
..... even during holidays. 
.... 
