I just got Photoshop for my wife. She’s wanted it for awhile, neither of us ever used it, I got it, we’re lost.
Well, I am. I’m supposed to show her how it works.
So anyway, it has the trusty help files and a tutorial, but it doesn’t seem very intuitive. Maybe it’s the way it’s presented, maybe it’s the ADD, maybe it’s because I’ve never seen anything related to PS other than finished pictures. Likely a combination of all 3.
Does anyone know of any websites or free programs that teach the basics of it? I know there are probably hundreds of pay sites/programs that teach it, but I don’t need to be a master of it overnight. I just want to learn the basics so I can teach myself the detailed stuff.
Depends what you want to do with the program. If you want to do proper graphics creation, i can’t help you. I mainly use Photoshop for fixing up my digital pictures. When i first got my digital camera, i had never used it either, but there are some great tutorials out there.
And, for an excellent and easy-to-follow tutorial on how to remove red eye:
Remember, these tutorials all focus on processing digital photos. If you want help with proper graphics work, hopefully someone else will be able to help you.
If you google, you’ll turn up more tutorials than you could ever hope for. My advice: pick something you want to know now to do (erase a background, airbrush a defect, etc.) and search specifically for that. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
mhendo, that’s mostly what, well actually all she wants to use it for. Thanks for the links.
lissener, that’s what Ill end up doing as I want to start entering the Fark contests. (The only reason I personally want to learn the program.) Once I get the general “feel” for the program, look out!
Waverly, I tried that a couple times but couple a Google search with a noob and it can seem alittle overwhelming when you don’t understand anything other than, “Hey, you can mess with pictures.” Google will be my friend, I’m sure, once I get a working knowledge of it.
Thanks for the tips. And thanks to that prehensile-tongued freak for moving the thread.
duffer: A suggestion, if I may: Photoshop is often overkill for simple photo touchups. If your wife just wants to crop pictures, correct brightness, redeyes, dark skies, etc… sure, Photoshop can do that, but there are a lot of simpler and easier-to-use programs designed for the task. Examples include the free Google Picasa, Corel Paint Shop Photo Album, ACDSee and the bundled software that typically comes with digital cameras. Photoshop is anything but intuitive and there’s no reason to use it unless you actually want to do more with its additional power.
But as for you, since you actually want to get creative and mess with Photoshop’s full potential (and you should! It’s an awesome tool for those who learn to use it), you can try these links:
About.com Photoshop Basics (Covers the interface, tools, etc. – basically, the basic basics and none of the really creative stuff. But these are things you gotta know to be able to do anything with the program.)
Worth1000.com Photoshop Tutorials. Worth1000 is a great Photoshop contests site – much like the Fark contests – and their tutorials section explains how specific contest entries were created. If this kind of Photoshop doctoring is what you want to do, this section should be helpful (but read the basic basics first so you know what these tutorials are talking about).
Also, if you don’t mind paying a bit of money (around $120 in my state), your local community college might offer Photoshop classes. If your time is limited, some of them also offer self-paced online ones. I personally find it easier & more interesting to learn with other students, an instructor and a set curriculum, but you might not find that necessary.
Thanks Reply, I’m looking for all the pointers I can get! For Christmas I got my wife one of those Kodak EasySharePrinterDockSuckItPolaroid bundles. It has most of what she wants to do, but not enough. She’ll use mostly the rudimentary features I’m sure. The main thing she wanted it for was to add an angel to a pic of her friend’s infant that died. (Sappy, I know, but as good a reason to blow coin on this program as any I guess.)
So now that I’ve spent this much on something we could have had done for $10 at a Kinko’s I want to unleash the beast.
Another site for a few cool effect tutorials is Phong. Worth1000 is also a great site for beginners – the links along the left have a tutorial site or two, and W1K itself has some tutorial sections and forums and an IRC channel to help neophites to the world of 'chopping.
I second Worth1000 because it gives you projects. I want to learn but never know where to start. They give themes and you look over the tutorials and make your own. But then again I am the type of person who needs goals and deadlines, so it’s perfect for me.
If you want to get into more complex fiddling I find some of the tutorials here and here are helpful. They generally focus on icon size for LJ, but the techniques work on a larger basis also.
Tutorials are great way to learn how to do something very specific (ie make a font, replace one peson’s head with another etc…) but if you want to learn the basics I’d suggest Adobe Photoshop Classroom in a book. It’s starts out very easy and ramps up at a just the right speed. It also comes with a CD (as do most books) so that you can follow along with the book instead of trying to adapt their methods to your own pictures, which you’ll do eventually, but for now it’s best not to stray to far, it’s rather easy to get lost in PS.
Just remember PS is a HUGE and VERY powerful program, it’ll take a long time to understand it all. One more thing, if you don’t get the book, the first thing you really want to really deeply understand is the idea of layers. Understand how they work, what exactly they do and how they interact with each other. That’s really the basis of photoshop (and most other photo editing prorams I’d assume). If you don’t understand layers all you’ll ever really be able to do is follow tutorials and 'go through the motions."
Ditto for me. If your into photography, they place I hang out is DSLreports Digital Imaging Forum since they have a contest always running it forces me to go out and take pictures. That forum is comprised of mostly amatures (but not all) . There’s a huge range of skill from never picked up a camera to very good, yet not quite as intimidating as FredMiranda.com. A pretty friendly bunch and they can help quite a bit with any questions you have that have just about anything to do with pictures.
