Help, learning Photoshop from scratch

[Meshugener]

Hello, I searched the forum and although I would have guessed this would be on here, I did not see it so forgive me if it is already posted somewhere. I bought Photoshop CS4 and am pretty intimidated. Every time I have tried to follow a tutorial online, about two steps into the thing my screen options don't look like the tutorial's and what is happening in my images are different than on the tutorial. Aside from this being discouraging, I really want to learn how to use Photoshop and I know I learn best by watching, however I have not come across tutorials that have been helpful.

I'm not particularly technologically daft, but following directions has never been a strong suit of mine.

If any of you have success stories, or suggestions on where to get started with Photoshop I would greatly appreciate it. Please hold back your "use photoshop and then you will get better" advice. Of course there is truth to this however I don't even know where to start.

Thank you for your help Community!

Practice.

Get used to layers, they are here to stay.

Learn what the little icons mean.

Know your foreground color from your back ground color.

Get really familiar with curves adjustments.

Learn to crop.

Learn how to save properly to preserve EXIF data.

Use youtube. it's a great place.

Buy a photoshop for dummies book.

Take a photo you don't care much about and just play around with stuff and see what everything does.

~Eric

[Jim Bryant]

Get Adobe's CS4 Classroom in a Book.

Originally Posted by Meshugener

Hello, I searched the forum and although I would have guessed this would be on here, I did not see it so forgive me if it is already posted somewhere. I bought Photoshop CS4 and am pretty intimidated. Every time I have tried to follow a tutorial online, about two steps into the thing my screen options don't look like the tutorial's and what is happening in my images are different than on the tutorial. Aside from this being discouraging, I really want to learn how to use Photoshop and I know I learn best by watching, however I have not come across tutorials that have been helpful.

I'm not particularly technologically daft, but following directions has never been a strong suit of mine.

If any of you have success stories, or suggestions on where to get started with Photoshop I would greatly appreciate it. Please hold back your "use photoshop and then you will get better" advice. Of course there is truth to this however I don't even know where to start.

Thank you for your help Community!

[WooD]

Originally Posted by Jim Bryant

Get Adobe's CS4 Classroom in a Book.

Adobe's book are most excellent, but can be a bit confusing for someone that's never used photoshop. Lots of technical talk.

As lame as it sounds I'd start out with a PS for Dummies book, and one of Scott Kelby's books.

I remember my first version of PS came on either 12 or 13 floppy disk.

[wulf]

Have you got any insights onto what your strongest learning styles are? Personally, I find tutorials quite helpful; if the illustrations veer from what is in front of me, that is not a problem because it will have started me looking round, experimenting, spotting things and learning. However, I do have an aptitude for computers and recognise this is not the case with everyone.

I wonder if you might find a taught course useful? If you often get thrown because your screen doesn't look like the illustration, having someone there who can explain why might be worth paying for to lift your ability.

Wulf

[eugenen]

Have a look at www.rastervector.com the take you from scratch throught every tool and funtion to some very advanced stuff an all is video tutorials. I could really recommend this, and even if some of the tutorials looks a little different I would say there wont real be anything missing in CS4 that was in CS1 there is a whole lot more you just have to find it and it would usualy be in almost the exact same position as before. The Photoshop layout has not cngaed alot over the last 10 years, just a little here and there. If you have any questions please feel vree to message me.

[jcoyle]

lynda.com has some great tutorials on photoshop for beginners. They aren't free mind you but definitely worth the money.

[Meshugener]

Thank you for all of your responses. I think a class would be a good idea for me as I do get thrown when screens are different than mine. I think this is because I have virtually no previous experience with photoshop and there are preferences for how you view your window right? Maybe my window has tools in different spots or something. I can follow the tutorials but, for example, I was trying this one where I wanted to change the background exposure in a portrait I took so that the Muslin wasn't gray in the picture. This tutorial did some sort of color value sample with a dropper looking tool. I did that, then you drag to expose, I did that, but my whole picture changed rather than just the background. Maybe this was a more advanced tutorial and I missed a step but this is the kind of thing I seem to run into.


I like the suggestions on here so far.

Thanks again

[wulf]

Yes - it sounds like a class... or some sort of resource which takes the time to explain what is going on rather than just going click, click, click, would be in order.

Wulf

[ARKreations]

I'll second lynda.com. There is a 3 part series on Photoshop CS3 by Deke McLelland called Photoshop One-on-One that is really good. You can get a monthly subscription for $25 that is well worth it if you can fully utilize it. I think the site may even let you preview a lesson or 2 from most of the tutorials to see what it's like.