A pox upon Adobe!
 

(fully aware I am setting myself up for lambasting..but...)

Am I a complete numb-scull, or did anyone else find Adobe Photoshop to be a motherfucker to learn how to use?

At first yes. Takes time geting used to. If you need beginner books on it I have a good selection

Boy does it ever take some getting used to. I don't remember having such a hard time learning Excel, as I am with this.

But..I am one of those guys who hates help files, because they seem to be written based on an assumption that everyone who reads them is fully knowledgeable in the program and just needs them for a little "refresher"..lol

It does feel good to vent my frustration, however.

Thank you for the offer, by the way. I appreciate your kindness. If I decided to actually spend the $600 to buy this thing after the 30 day trial is up...I might take you up on your offer. :-)

If you can read english and you got brains, its enough to learn it. it just takes lots of practice. of course, therell be things youll never learn if there aint someone there to teach you, and tell you when you should use it.

Here are a few links to help you out

http://www.teamphotoshop.com/index.php
http://www.eyesondesign.net/pshop/tuts.htm
http://www.photoshoproadmap.com/phot...ials-tips.html
http://robouk.mchost.com/tuts/ps.php
http://www.atomicwienerdog.com/?page=articles/ot
http://www.gfxlab.com/
http://www.tutorialfind.com/tutorials/adobe/

:thumbsup

I didn't like the complexity of Photoshop when I started using it. Its kind of like a game where you have to learn a zillion rules and control buttons before you can play it well. I used Corel Draw / Paint and Micrografix Picture Publisher before PS, but they started becoming less automated and headed towards the complexity of PS, so I decided to just learn it.

Now I love it and every other program looks lame next to it. PS gives you more control over every element than any other program I've seen. Its fun once you just take the experimental attitude with it. Try different tweaking here and there and see what you get from an image.

I use CompuPic Pro for my image management software. Its the best I've found for that function.

http://www.Photodex.com

Thanks for those...a true help. It's taken me about 3 years and I still consider myself somewhat a beginner

yup, photoshop is a bitch to learn. especially if you are used to another GUI, like I am.

Thanks tons...I appreciate the help.

I also feel a lot less stupid knowing that a lot of you other guys feel it is as complex as I do.

Thanks for all your comments!

go to http://www.3dbuzz.com and download his free VTM on Photoshop... it's about 3 hours of video training for free... goes over all the basics of PS... You will have a pretty good handel on using PS when you are done... Buzz is a very good teacher.. I went to the school he teaches at.

I only use the most simple functions and I still get clusterfucked sometimes using it. It isn't the most simple program in the world, that's for sure.

People at adobe should be horsewhipped for making it so unintuitive and difficult to use. My theory is that its intentionally this way. They have no real competition and most people use it for that reason and because "everybody else uses it". They know that the more time and effort you invest in it, the less the chances of you throwing all that time away to start over with something else. So there is virtually no effort on their part to make it even a little bit intuitive. And adobe is second only to micro$oft in doing everything they can to crush any semblance of competition.
PS is extremely powerfull once you have used it a few years, there is no substitute for it once you really know how to use it. The problem is there will never be any competition for it because after you have struggled for hundreds if not thousands of hours learning it you aint going to even think about going through that again with something else. And they know it.
The $500 you pay for it is just a very small down payment, the amount of time you waste in the first year or two figuring it out will be enormous. And time is money. Even though i use it extensively now, and even though its extremely powerful, i regularly question whether its been worth the cost i have paid. Sometimes i dream of what i would like to do to adobe engineers if i could catch them in a back alley somewhere.