This sound awful to say but I can't help you but would love to pick your brain on design anyway if you're open to it. Particularly since I have no background on the stuff you're looking for.
I've been trying to get into design, particularly starting with photoshop... But a ton of the material are geared towards photography editing. The few tutorials I was able to find that were web related where difficult to follow. What would you suggest as a good starting point from someone who doesn't know how to use photoshop (or any other tools) at all, that would be more relevant to web design.
I did find some website tutorials online but I'm not sure they are helpful or maybe its just I'm not getting it.
I'd suggest downloading some design freebies (you can start here: http://sachagreif.com/the-design-freebies-list/ ) and "reverse-engineering" them in Photoshop. Also, just look at other designer's portfolios and work you can learn most of what you know simply by analysing great work.
The problem is I don't know how to use photoshop lol. I prefer visual tutorials but youtube vids are severely lacking. The ones I find, are very photo centric as opposed to website design centric. Alternatively a good photoshop book for web design would be nice but I haven't come by one that is specific enough on learning photoshop
The thing is, there's no such thing as "website design centric" techniques in Photoshop, except maybe the effects palette (but you can learn 90% of that just by playing around with the options).
The effects palette aside, all you need for web design is the typographic tools, vector shapes, and rulers (to set up your grid). So you can basically learn the technical aspect of "Photoshop for web design" in 30 minutes.
