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- laterthandawn, on 10/12/2007, -6/+48Better yet: use Photoshop to learn Photoshop.
The YouTube tutorials are awesome for tricks and tips, but nothing beats just getting down and dirty with that program. Invent an end product you want to achieve, and click every button until you figure it out. You'll learn a bunch of cool ***** on the way. I promise, it works.
Once you get it figured out, grab some good ideas from YouTube, etc. - GawtMilk, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20Let me tell you this:
I've written over two hundred photoshop tutorials for various websites. You learn Photoshop by using Photoshop, not by looking at video tutorials. It is great to learn the very basics, like how to airbrush / correct color casts, but the key to creative, sucessful results come from experimentation. - dmightx, on 09/21/2008, -1/+15I'm not a pro or anything but all I know about Photoshop I learned because of tutorials. Hey I'm not saying I remember what the tutorials tought exactly but if it wasn't for the tutorials I would have probably never learned as fast. I don't think it matters either way unless you do ONLY what the tutorials teach you.
Its either... play around with photoshop BEFORE the tutorials or...
play around with photoshop on your own AFTER the tutorials... I don't see much difference but yes I do understand where you are coming from. - D3koy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14Revison3 has Bert Monroy do a show called "Pixel Perfect" where he teaches you how to use photoshop...It's pretty cool, but I recommend just screwing around in photoshop and having fun...
- se7en11, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Let ME tell you this: drop shadows are the key to any good design. The more you use the better. Between that and some default bevels, you've got a masterpiece.
- TheKingInYellow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8a majority of "tutorials" i have seen on youtube are absolutely horrible. if you're really interested in learning how to use photoshop you should just sit down and use the damned program. i would recommend tutorials to a beginner but once you start to pick up on the way things work and how to achieve what you're looking for you should rarely use tutorials.
i would recommend starting here:
good-tutorials.com
computerarts.co.uk
good luck. - griz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Lets go up here and insert a "Happy Little Cloud" by selecting Filter:Render:Clouds...
- mattcoxonline, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Bert Monroy's PixelPerfect is ace! He's the Bob Ross of digital art.
- primehifi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I agree. I tried to use youtube to learn pen tool. Ended up just using PS's help and messing with it till I learned how to use it... Then I went back to youtube to see if I was missing anything.
Also, Bert Monroy can have my children. - aakins, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Plus, Bert ALWAYS recommends to just play around in Photoshop. He attempts to make sure that the viewers understand that practice makes pixel perfect.
- Sebach, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Don't forget the lens flare either.
- NWFackler, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Lynda.com is the *****! I used it to learn the entire CS2 suite and there is nothing better...
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I hate video tutorials. Text tutorials are so much better, in my opinion.
- christelle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It's best to use the actual programs I agree, but I prefer somebody teaches me because I tend to get sick to the 'help' feature rather quickly.
- cakestick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Pixel Perfect can be downloaded on a schedule in high-def with the Democracy player:
http://www.getdemocracy.com
Just thought I'd pass this along, I was amazed when I got to finally figure out how the pen tool is used. The show is a default feed in the player. - KSUdesigner, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Too intimidating? Grow some balls. A lot of the tools are obvious (paintbrush = paint, type tool = text, etc.) Just click something and see what it does, it's really the easiest way to learn the program. Today at work my coworker had her 7 year old daughter in the office because of no school. The little girl was in my office all day watching me work in Photoshop. By the end of the day I had her sitting at another computer and she was figuring out a lot of stuff on her own. I showed her the paintbrush tool and she went to town with selecting different brushes and changing brush options all on her own (well, I did make sure the brush pallette was open, but I didn't tell her what to do with it at all). She had the text tool and the basics of layers down too.
If a 7 year old can sit down and figure things out (basic things, but still figuring stuff out none-the-less), then why can't you? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I agree, Lynda.com is "the *****".
oh and check out this video I made
http://www.dailymotion.com/Yourbuddy/video/2107059
digg it =]
http://digg.com/videos_animation/Photoshop_Project_2 - KSUdesigner, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Your stories about your friends/coworkers are kind of contradicting your main argument. First you say, "I disagree with people saying to just use the program and you will learn it well enough." Then you go on to talk about how your boss never needed slices before and you showed them to him. Well obviously he had learned it well enough to get by for years, you just showed him an easier way of doing things. Truly if you only learn the basics of Photoshop it is enough to get most people by. The beauty of the application is that there are multiple ways to achieve a given effect. The advanced techniques usually get the job done faster and only occasionally produce better results. I could sit there for hours trying to use the magic wand and marquee tools trying to select a complex area, or I could spend a few minutes using channels to get that same selection. The basics would've worked just fine, but advanced techniques will get me there quicker.
I agree though about all of the tutorials being way too basic. I subscribed to Lynda.com for a month, only found a handful of things that I didn't already know. It would be nice to see tutorials that produce "real world" results, but unfortunately the bulk of them are geared toward people who have never used Photoshop before. I've actually been wanting to start making advanced tutorials but I have no time for that lately. Someday. - Empyrean, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yeah, screw around, use different tools, even if you dont know what they do. Use all the toolbar and menu options as well. And dont forget to use layers, experimentation is key. If you do get stuck or cant figure out exactly how something works, there is this thing called a help file, and Photoshop's help file is very extensive and filled with lots of good information.
- jrsims, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1And gradients. Gotta have gradients. A gradient with a pattern is even better.
- flag564, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Playing with a program is always an important component to learning to use it.
However, the use of a video tutorial is a great help. Seeing a person using the program can sometimes make all the difference.
I learned the basic functions of SketchUp from their video tutorial. I was looking for weeks for some Linux videos - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What I do is just play around in Photoshop, I have never taken any graphic design class and now I'm actually a decent photoshopper =] My teacher said I could teach the graphic design class!
If have no clue what a tool does I watch videos or quickly read through tutorials to see how other people use them. - Trevino, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Here is a great free course so you can get to know all the basics:
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photoshop/l/bllps5out.htm - christelle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I've seen some of these videos, they're not high quality but once in a while i actually search for them, because they tend to be helpful
- CircleFusion, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I disagree with people saying to just use the program and you will learn it well enough. Sure you will learn the basics within the first week. There is no doubt that you absolutely MUST experiment with the program to become comfortable with the tools and think in a photoshop-like way, but there are some intermediate to advanced techniques that won't really make sense until someone explains them or tells you that those tools even exist.
Some of the amazing features of photoshop are the advanced features. That is part of what makes it powerful and different than other graphics editing software.
My boss (HTML coder) didn't know what slices were until a month ago when he saw my co-worker and I using them to cut up the graphic mockups coming from the design team. He's been using Photoshop for converting Mockups to HTML for years. He's no idiot. He just didn't need slices before, so he never learned them. He would flatten his image and use selection boxes. Now he knows slices because we pointed that out to him.
I had a friend who had used Photoshop for a couple of years doing website design on the side. I showed him how to do slices and how to create his own patterns, as well as some details of the vector tools. He had spent a lot of time playing around with Photoshop, but he didn't know those aspects of the program. He spent more of his time learning the layer effects. He probably knew the layer effects better than I did.
Photoshop is a comlicated program with a lot of advanced features. I'm sure that I don't even know a good 1/3 of those features, and I've been using Photoshop since v2.5. There is a lot to learn. One of the problems with the tutorials that I've seen is that they cover things that are way too basic, things that you CAN figure out by just playing around with the software for a couple of weeks. I would really like to see more intermediate to advanced tutorials. I liked some of the Lynda.com tutorials that I saw, especially the photoshop "realism" one where he created a 3D looking scene and showed how to make some imperfections in the paint to give it more realistic texture. I will try to check out some of the "PixelPerfect" videos on Revision3, just as long as the video size is large enough. - ndiderrich, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Well it beats tutorials that are reading and interpretation. Even though the quality sucks it still beats reading anyday.
- CircleFusion, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0you can also use this URL now
http://www.pixelimageeditor.com
Right now it forwards to the kanzelsberger domain, but that will change eventually. - darkstorm777, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Lens Flare FTW!!!!
- BluesX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Yeah...but what am I going to use to learn YouTube?
- CircleFusion, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I just read above that the Pixel Perfect show is available in higher quality using the democracy player. That's good!
- polybiosis, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1So many things you can learn from youtube.....but photoshop? I agree with just get down play with it first, get familiar with the tools (millions of them) then watch the tutorials at youtube.
- Kajun, on 10/12/2007, -6/+0I know most of the people who read this dont really need the tutorials but to some of us the software is just too itimidating to try to figure out where to begin. The tutorials are good for those of us who kinda know what we want but just have no idea where to begin.
on a side note...do the photo shop tutorials work for GIMP? Im too much of a noob to go out and buy photoshop :)
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