Photoshop. Where to start?

[surrealchereal]

Where is the easiest place to start learning photo shop?
Is there a good beginners primer out there? Seems most tech books thrive on who can be the most complicated and user unfriendly.. By the time you can understand it you don't need it.
How have some of you guys started on it? Or do you just load it up and poke buttons? :rolleyes:

[jadison]

NDC has been working with it for almost a decade. I've been working with it for a total of 5 hours. :)

Check these threads for a lot of useful information, tutorials, and other resources that will get you started using PS. They helped me.

- http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=544

- http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=720

- Info on new PS 7 (http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=741 )

Enjoy, and have fun. :)

[NDC]

How have some of you guys started on it?

Well, for me, it started out as a hobby back in the days of Photoshop 2.x when I was studying to become a programmer! :rolleyes: (My tiny brain couldn't handle it). I just started playing around with all the features and slowly began to understand the features. Later, I bought a book for Photoshop 3.0. I know this will come unbelievable to you, but it appeared that I already knew at leat 85% of the features that were described in the book I bought! That's when I really started digging deep in to it. I first started building my skills for color adjustments and enhancements on photographs and later began recreating images I saw in magazines.... I think I learned the most when I began recreating images of others. The reason I say that is because you eventually get stuck at a point where you'll need to find a way to get around it. A lot of the techiques I use now are ones I learned from this... There is no right or wrong way of using Photoshop once you understand the optimal resolution, raster vs. vector images, etc... One good suggestion I would like to make is "ALWAYS WORK AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE TO THE ACTUAL SIZE OF THE IMAGE WHEN WORKING WITH PHOTOSHOP". Photoshop is a raster based image editor and resizing isn't one of its best features... We have Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, etc for that! ;)

[surrealchereal]

Thanks for the good tips NDC, if nothing else I want to make some wallpaper to identify my pc's :)