The Step-by-Step Tutorials
Trying to learn Photoshop these days is a hard thing to do. Why? Because there are to many sites this days that post the daily step-by-step tutorials that don’t teach you what exactly to do but just show you the outcome and let you follow the steps to the end. After that, you might want to bookmark them, leave a comment on the so-called website and came back next week and read another step by step “trick” that will give you a precise outcome.
The problem is that Photoshop is all about creativity. It’s part of the Creative Suite right? These step-by-step tutorials give you almost nothing that could make you creative… However they might be useful for you in a way you never thought possible.
I was reading 10, maybe 12 tutorials/day at the beginning, and almost all the time I tried to find out how did the author get to that steps. How did this author do it? Well that’s the question you should ask your self while reading or doing the steps on your computer. Each tutorial can teach you a rule. Let’s take for example a button tutorial. Have you noticed that almost all those buttons have a smooth effect or a glass effect? Reading 5 or 10 tutorials about this might make you discover that there are 5 ways of smoothing and 4 ways of adding the glass effect. I just hope this will clarify what I’m trying to say here.
You will need to read a lot of tutorials like this if you want to improve. They are the worst – in my opinion – and sometimes hard to understand because they have missing steps or sometimes they don’t get exactly the result needed but they are needed!
Even thought they are most of the time boring, they train you for the real thing. Don’t go on a tutorial indexing page and read all the tutorials one by one or pick up random ones. This approach doses not work well at all. Try to pick up a target. Let’s take for example “learning to make buttons”. Search for thing like “button”, “web button”, “glassy effect”, “smooth button”, “web 2 buttons” and read about 10 of them. Try to put some of them into action and see if you agree with me. See if you can find the “common” land in all of them.
Some of the coolest websites out there – again in my opinion- are:
“Good Tutorials”
The place where you can find new ones every hour or so. One of my favorite Photoshop Training Free Source. It’s not only about Photoshop, but it’s grate. Try it! For a beginner, it’s a grate place to be because there are many easy to follow tutorials, and the staff selects the submission quite well.
“Tutorialized”
Huge is the word for this site. 7740 Photoshop tutorials at this time. Has a lot of flash ones too, but the tutorials quality is a bit lower and many times I found tutorials with missed steps. It’s a good practice pace for medium level or higher level photoshopers.
The sites has it’s good part to, it has tons of tutorials, so who know what jewels you might find there. More links can found in the “links” section of the blog so fell free to try a few of them.
Something similar to the plain-text step-by-step tutorial is the step-by-step video tutorial. Those ones are a bit better because they are proven to work tricks, and usually the author talks about what he dose and why. Exactly the things you need to listen. Pay close attention the what the author says, try to remember keywords like “and now let’s add a effect using ”.
"Photoshop Tutorials Blog"
This one has some video tutorials that I like. Even now, when I have 3 years and a half of photoshoping history, I find out new things from the video tutorials. This blog is lovely, so go take a look! :D
"Video-Tutes"
Even though those videos don’t have sounds, they are really grate for the beginning. Truly a well done work for the “Basics” category. I will defiantly link to them in the future, when I will write about the basics about Photoshop on my blog here.
The huge step-by-step Tutorials
Why am I talking about huge step-by-step tutorials in a different way? Well… Those ones are almost the “thing” when photoshoping. Huge step-by-step tutorials like full web design tutorials and complete photo manipulation are something grate to try , but they require a medium level of knowledge and a lot of free time. Don’t expect to learn everything you need from one tutorial like this. They have a lot of missing steps and they almost defiantly don’t comment on the decisions that they make when, for example, they add the logo of the site on the right side, and the menu under the title bar, using a soft gradient etc.
This learning approach is not for newbie ones. It requires experience, and it will not give results if you don’t find the key elements and remember them. It’s also true that practice make it best, but you risk ending up losing time and gaining nothing.
Unfortunately, my knowledge about photo manipulation is limited; I am not a real artist so I didn’t train a lot on the retouch techniques. However, for the web design part I have another interesting suggestion.
Web design tutorials
My bet is that if you are want to be a better web designer you are already prepared to learn a bit of code and get the basics of color themes handled.
Knowing which colors go well with which colors and how to make web elements stand out is the next step after learning the basics of Photoshop. I made a big mistake taking the advanced training tutorials before learning the color rules. There are many html/css related tutorials that talk about this matter. Keep in mind that there is no use to learn more about photoshoping than the basics if you don’t know how to crate a simple CSS styled site.
Free material about this matter is grate, but it will take some time to acquire the “eye” to see the way colors go and the way elements should be placed in a unique and user-friendly way.
Good-luck with your learning! :D
Photoshop Xtreme Text Effect
Create a new Photoshop document of 400x400 pixels. Fill the background in black by pressing Command/Ctrl+I while the background layer is selected. Grab the text tool, set the size of the font to 100pt (going to the toolbar just below the application menu) and write a word like “Xtreme” using “#60bf06” or another color similar to this one.
