
Resources To Learn Photoshop - samsolomon
http://signaltower.co/2013/01/17/resources-to-learn-photoshop/
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mnicole
Just as note: a lot of these tutorial sites advocate methods that make what
you're trying to accomplish harder than it has to be or leaves your work (or
just layers of it) in states where it is hard to manipulate thereafter. This
can leave people with a bad taste in their mouth, and while in many cases
Adobe deserves the snark (especially when it comes to documentation and
organization of the tools), a lot of the complaints are simply just people not
knowing the capabilities of the software.

Before going to generic tutorial sites, try to find some prolific digital
artists or designers whose work you are trying to mimic. See if they have
blog, Dribbble (I keep a small bucket of nice freebies I come across there
here - [http://dribbble.com/mandynicole/buckets/50265-Workflow-
Resou...](http://dribbble.com/mandynicole/buckets/50265-Workflow-Resources))
or deviantArt posts on their process, particularly with source files to boot.
Adobe's forums can be really helpful too, and there's a lot of great advice on
design message boards for professionals that know the software in and out and
know the most effective way of accomplishing a certain look.

Also, with this audience especially, don't be afraid of using (or writing!)
scripts to accomplish more abstract or tedious tasks. Both Photoshop and
Illustrator accept JavaScript, VBScript and AppleScript. You can see some of
the fun stuff people have done for Illustrator through Scriptographer here -
<http://scriptographer.org/gallery/> (and also tutorials on how to make your
own). Have fun!

~~~
mnicole
I should add that if you are on OS X and know you won't be opening Photoshop
files, Pixelmator has tons of great tutorials
(<http://www.pixelmator.com/tutorials>) for all skill-levels and is on sale
for $15 right now. It can open PSDs just fine (including guides and editable
text), but - at least right now - it has some trouble importing the look of
certain layer effects that are also affected by opacity, the layer effects are
merged/not editable and Smart Objects are rasterized/not scalable.

