Question for all you Photoshop Masters
 

How did you become so good? did you buy a bunch of books? did you go to college for graphic design? did you spend countless hours reading online tutorials?

Never took a course. Self taught. I think thats how most people learned :2 cents:

Ive been messing with Photoshop since the Windows 3.1 days.

Practice Practice Practice

I started using Photoshop to make fake Ids back when I was in school .

but yeah , totally what he said above .. Hours and hours and hours of practicing .

many hours of sitting in front of a computer, getting high, and making stuff.

Play and enjoy.. see something you like, try to emulate it.

Download free actions and styles and check out how they work, what things mean and do..

And if you're doing it for web based stuff, consider how optimisation affects your end results.. no use designing something that's going to be a 200KB download for a web-page to look decent.

http://gfysigwhore.com/images/bouncyjuicy.gif
http://gfysigwhore.com/images/juicyhero.gif

Chop chop...

Have any templates left? I misplaced all of mine :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

http://gfysigwhore.com/images/juicypizza.gif

Play, play and more play... :thumbsup

I'm no master, but I have the passion for image editing that it takes you to play with image editing programs endlessly.

self-taught as well.
PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE!!

some of the coolest shit i can do is from accidently doing it lol you just gotta fuck with it, have fun with it.

recently, i bought my first PS book, its a teach-yourself photoshop in 24 hours book. (by SAMS). got it on Amazon.com for like $6 (brand new) i wanted a book laying around in case i want to do something specific and if i didnt know how, i could just whip out the book & learn it in an hour or two. :)

Nah , they were garbage anyway ..
Only worked like 50% of the time .

But I made good coin for a while :1orglaugh


HOW COME YOU CANT DELETE A POST >
IM LOGGED IN AS THE WIFE FOR SOME FUCKIN REASON :P

Since when can't ya delete a post ?

Books and practice is the best way.

I'm dating myself with this one, but when I was in college we didn't use computers to design, we did it by hand :1orglaugh

I'm self taught but i learned Corel years before i ever opened photoshop, I still feel Corel is a better app but i mostly use photoshop now

can anyone recommend some good books for a newbie?

What he/she said.

I would recommend www.lynda.com , they have video tutorials where you get to watch what the pros do, its screen recordings. it costs 25 dollars a month, but they have lots of free examples if you just want to see a few things.

There is an element required and not all people have it.

The element is loving the art of design.
If you do not like designing you aint gonna be a good designer.
Anyone can pick up a book and do the tutorials but the call to be a great designer goes beyond just reading and doing tutorials.

It goes beyond dedication as well...
Jimmy Page couldnt play the guitarre if he didnt love what he did for example.

GOd knows designers are not designing for the money...

Its the love for what we do that keeps us going.

exactly! the passion for art is either in your blood or it's not, it can't be learned from a book. It's a craving that is never satisfied, and if you don't acknowledge it, it's like a part of you just dies

That is very nice :thumbsup

Started making my own site years ago with paintshoppro. I loved to design and bought PS after a while, I hated it at first but I tried lots of online tutorials to get the basics. Never bought a book or took any offline classes though.

Practiced, practiced, practiced and after a while I put up a small portfolio. Amazingly enough people started to do orders and it really took of from that point.