Photoshop Tutorials for beginners.

February 6, 2006 2:23 AM

I am looking for some tutorials for photoshop. Specifically beginner tutorials. Better yet, a website that ranks its tutorials based on the complexity level. Any other suggestions on how to learn photoshop (besides "practice alot") would also be much appreciated

I am familiar with the website good-tutorials.com/, which is helpful, although it doesnt rank the level of hardness. (I could of course, just search for easy ones).

posted by VillainousJester to computers & internet (16 comments total)

www.swedesignz.com
posted by arrowhead at 3:43 AM on February 6, 2006

Janee's
posted by Corky at 3:48 AM on February 6, 2006

Photoshop Cafe

Check out Worth 1000. They have a tutorial section, and a beginner's area, forums... good site.
posted by Corky at 3:51 AM on February 6, 2006

Night school. Seriously, most Continuing Education programs offer a course in Photoshop.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:42 AM on February 6, 2006

Buy this book. It's very good.
posted by Roger Dodger at 5:00 AM on February 6, 2006

http://www.n-sane.net/tutorials.php
posted by nimsey lou at 5:03 AM on February 6, 2006

Someone posted this a while back. It has just under 2500 different Photoshop tutorials alone.
posted by tcobretti at 6:23 AM on February 6, 2006

It depends. As you mention that practicing isn't a preferred option, do you need to find procedures for doing the exact things you need to accomplish? Also Photoshop is used for many different things, besides adjusting photos. I use it for creting web graphics, drawings, photo adjustment, photomontage, etc. But it has so many more uses. What will be your use for it? That will make a difference as to what information or tutorials are going to help you. Personally I prefer books which always will provide a very comprehensive reference of information on the software.
posted by JJ86 at 6:29 AM on February 6, 2006

pixel2life.com/tutorials/Adobe_Photoshop/All/

you'll learn it by using it : ) it's just true

there are many good photoshop books, earlier ask.mefi questions and amazon reviews will show you lots
posted by suni at 6:52 AM on February 6, 2006

www.pegaweb.com is where I learned my Photoshop basics. It's geared toward web design, but if you pay attention, you can take those same techniques and use them in regular image creation/manipulation.
posted by jxpx777 at 6:55 AM on February 6, 2006

There are two free weekly video podcasts available in iTunes: Photoshop TV and One-Minute Tip: Photoshop Wednesdays. The later tends to be basic, but I usually learn a trick or two I didn't know about.
posted by hydrophonic at 7:22 AM on February 6, 2006

Lynda.com
posted by undertone at 9:02 AM on February 6, 2006

I have found the video tutorials at The Radiant Vista to be very useful. They help me to see how someone with more Photoshop experience than myself approaches image adjustment. Look in the Photoshop Workbench and Video Tutorial categories.

The tutorials aren't ranked in terms of difficulty, as you requested, but if you start from the earlier Photoshop Workbench tutorials, they do sort of build on each other.
posted by nobodyyouknow at 9:30 AM on February 6, 2006

I teach PS classes in NYC. If you're in the area, feel free to contact me (profile).

Many people here have recommended good resources (to which I'd add Photoshopuser.com, totaltraining.com, vtc.com, and photoshoptechniques.com). But regardless of which resources you use, try to gradually learn PS's power-tools. There are a series of tools in the program that are really key for mastery. You don't need to learn them all at once, but keep a list of them and try to get through the list over the next couple of years.

If there's an item on the list that gives you trouble, try going through several tutorials by different people. When I was trying to learn Curves, I went to Barnes and Noble and took a huge stack of photoshop books of the shelf. I sat in the cafe for the next two hours and read just the Curves chapter in each one. Changed my life.

The list (other people might add items to this):

-- selections (beyond just using the Magic Wand for everything)
-- Curves
-- Levels
-- Channels & Modes (i.e. rgb/cmyk/lab)
-- Layers (including layer masks)
-- Brushes
-- Type
-- Paths (including pen as a selection tool)
-- resolution (hint: dpi matters for print only)
-- for web: slices and web compression
-- Key filers: Unsharp mask, Liquify, Extract, Gaussian Blur
posted by grumblebee at 10:12 AM on February 6, 2006 [1 favorite]

Not to be sharky, but the photoshop manual is really quite a good intro to the application. It won't go deep, but it will give you the broad overview.
posted by blindcarboncopy at 12:13 PM on February 6, 2006

Thanks everyone, this was very helpful.

and just to clear this up, its not that practicing alot is not the prefferred option, its actually the opposite, I know its a must, so to hear it as a suggestion isnt very helpful.
posted by VillainousJester at 12:57 AM on February 9, 2006