Photoshop help?

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I now find myself as the inhouse 'designer' guy at my work. Only problem is, after years of doing non-design related work, my design skills have crumbled to dust. I still think I have good ideas and I can kind of cobble something together but I know I'm not doing things in the easiest ways. I'm realizing that since I taught myself photoshop years ago, there is a lot that I don't know about it. I stumbled into various (often clumsy) ways of doing things and never bothered to learn the right way.
At this point I'm looking for a book or a website that can help me start over with my photoshop education and learn it correctly. I am a very visual learner so ideally I'm looking for something that has multiple lessons or tutorials that walk you through using the tools rather than just a reference book that describes what all the tools do. I find with reference books I can lose focus or have a very difficult time envisioning what they are describing. I need something that I can follow along step by step. Any suggestions?

― ianinportland (ianinportland), Thursday, 3 February 2005 20:47 (twenty years ago)

http://www.pslover.com/tutorials/TextFX/8/

Photoshop List of Tutorials

photoshop rock / stone textures tutorials usi...

Eyes on Design - Photoshop tutorial - Chrome ...

Savva Photoshop Tutorials,Portal,Glass,Chrome...

Robouk - Designs: Online Tutorials.

Photoshop Tutorials: Textures and Patterns

Purephotoshop Forums - Photoshop and 2D Depar...

― John Biershitz, Thursday, 3 February 2005 21:07 (twenty years ago)

http://www.pslover.com/tutorials/TextFX/8/

Photoshop List of Tutorials

photoshop rock / stone textures tutorials usi...

Eyes on Design - Photoshop tutorial - Chrome ...

Savva Photoshop Tutorials,Portal,Glass,Chrome...

Robouk - Designs: Online Tutorials.

Photoshop Tutorials: Textures and Patterns

Purephotoshop Forums - Photoshop and 2D Depar...

― John Biershitz, Thursday, 3 February 2005 21:07 (twenty years ago)

I'm completely self-taught and there are multiple ways of doing things (i.e. your way may not actually be "wrong").

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 3 February 2005 21:12 (twenty years ago)

The program is very robust and it's used for so many different things. It's been to learn on a project. Like, I have to touch up this photo. Or, I have to make a banner. I have to design a website. etc.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 3 February 2005 21:13 (twenty years ago)

in my experience, the first thing you should do is throw away the owners manual. Adobe has done a poor job of explaining the hows and whys of all the tools. This goes for the official online Adobe lessons, as well. You can probably learn more by Googling whatever it is you want to do.

― Pears can just fuck right off. (kenan), Thursday, 3 February 2005 21:15 (twenty years ago)

John - Thanks! Are those links to things that you have actually used and found helpful or are they untested sources?

Spencer - Yeah, I know my way might not be "wrong", especially if in the end I get the result I was trying for. Bass-ackwards might be a better way to describe it. I have a feeling oftentimes, that the things that take me 12 steps to accomplish, probably take other more knowledgeable people 4 or 5 steps.

Pears - I do find that book to be fairly convoluted. Good to hear it's not just me.

― ianinportland (ianinportland), Thursday, 3 February 2005 21:28 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, a lot of it is convoluted, and the program is old enough that bad decisions early in the process have stuck with it through all later versions, just to keep longtime users from getting lost. Ferrinstance -- the "filters" menu contains both "filters," i.e. things you put over the lens of a camera, and pure digital effects, all mixed together. I know where they all are, so it's no big deal to me anymore, but it's not especially helpful if you don't.

― Pears can just fuck right off. (kenan), Thursday, 3 February 2005 21:31 (twenty years ago)

i've been using Photoshop for nearly nine years now and have never EVER used the masking tools properly bar the odd tutorial at college. ig to very good at lassooing in that time, and i don't really like the 'magnetic' option and prefer to select and cut freehand when i can. remember that Photoshop has a lot of functions and you won't need all of them - i got most of the filter/effects out of my system after 6 years of regular use.

― Alienus Quam Reproba (blueski), Thursday, 3 February 2005 21:51 (twenty years ago)

Steve, I don't use masking either!!!

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 3 February 2005 21:55 (twenty years ago)

I've only recently started using masking because of the lens blur tool:

http://www.computer-darkroom.com/tutorials/tutorial_9.htm

You can digitally widen the aperture on your camera. Like most of Photoshop, I don't understand all of what it does. Could having a hex blade shutter vs. a octagon blade shutter really affect your focus *that* much? I guess it could, 'cause it's an option on this filter. Anyway, it works best with masking.

― Pears can just fuck right off. (kenan), Thursday, 3 February 2005 21:59 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, I use those tutorials. Of course, not every tutorial there is great or even worth the load time, but some are fantastic. They are bookmarked at work in case I need to make some metal or whatever and can't figure it out on my own.

Mastery of masks/channels is key. You'd be surprised the realistic effects you can pull off by combining noise, blurs and lighting effects using a texture channel.

― John Biershitz, Thursday, 3 February 2005 22:03 (twenty years ago)

When I first started thinking I needed to become better with Photoshop my first thought was, "well I guess I should try to use that masking tool for once"!

Yeah, masking and channels = complete mystery to me.

― ianinportland (ianinportland), Thursday, 3 February 2005 22:07 (twenty years ago)

you should buy the computer arts projects magazines... there's computer arts, computer arts projects, practical web projects and... maybe another? they all come with cd's that have plugins and tutorial files and such... the magazines themselves are chock full of helpful info and tutorials... all done by fairly well known designers... the bonus is that unlike a lot of the tutorial books most of these tutorials use design examples that are actually aesthetically appealing and tasteful... the downside is that being in the US, i wind up spending about $60/month just on these magazines alone, as they're $15 each.

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Thursday, 3 February 2005 22:16 (twenty years ago)

Don't expect too much from the CDs, though. The really useful stuff on them is all demo versions. So you pay $15 to get hooked, then who knows where it ends.

― Pears can just fuck right off. (kenan), Thursday, 3 February 2005 22:28 (twenty years ago)

I love the computer arts line of mags, but a lot of their tutorials have considerable holes in them!

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 3 February 2005 22:31 (twenty years ago)

yeah... it took me a while to realize this. i thought it was just me for a while before i noticed the pattern. still though, i think you can learn a lot of really useful (ahem, marketable) skills with the simple stuff in these magazines.

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Thursday, 3 February 2005 22:44 (twenty years ago)

Totally agreed. I'd say it's $60/month well spent. Although I try to limit myself to 1x$15 a month. I got my company to reimburse me for the "handbook" collections of articles.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 3 February 2005 22:50 (twenty years ago)

This mag sounds great. Spencer - please tell me more about the handbook. Where does one find it? What's the exact title? Is it just a collection of tutorials/articles from the magazine?

― ianinportland (ianinportland), Thursday, 3 February 2005 23:17 (twenty years ago)

one year passes...

our designer has been asking for a copy of a little something i wrote in java that batch resizes square images to a set of known defaults (45, 56, 90 and 112 square, all 256 colour pngs, optimised palette) and sticking them in directories named after the new size (file.png ends up as 45x45/file.png for instance). unfortunately i cheated and imagemagick and pngcrush do all the heavy lifting for my java app and i'm not sure how happy he'll be about installing these.

but he uses photoshop and there's got to be a way of writing macros to do this resizing in photoshop. doesn't there?

a quick google turns up: http://www.creativemac.com/2002/04_apr/tutorials/psbatch.htm

is that enough?

― koogs (koogs), Tuesday, 16 May 2006 10:54 (nineteen years ago)

That's what I used to do for uploading pics to my web site, before I got lazy and switched to flickr. Works a charm but you'd have to run it four times, once for each desired resolution.

― ledge (ledge), Tuesday, 16 May 2006 12:02 (nineteen years ago)

eight months pass...

I've been getting this infuriating problem for a while now where GIF images I open in Photoshop are coming up with the their width squashed by approximately two thirds. In the title bar for each image it says [scaled]. I can't find anything about this in Help and can't work out how to turn it off (or why it started happening). It only affects the GIFs on my local machine that I copied from a network drive. Any Photoshop experts recognise this problem?

― vita susicivus (blueski), Monday, 5 February 2007 15:49 (eighteen years ago)

This happens to me occasionally with emailed images. No idea why, sorry.

― Tuesdays With Morimoto (Rock Hardy), Monday, 5 February 2007 15:57 (eighteen years ago)

five months pass...

I don't recognise the problem, but maybe it has something to do with non-square pixels?

Some versions let you have rectangular pixels, I think it's something to do with video.

― mei, Monday, 16 July 2007 16:40 (eighteen years ago)

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