Need Photoshopping advice

[JD Cross]

Some of you are expert at photoshopping.
I'm a complete novice.
Not trying to do anything too fancy.
Mostly just be able to take a picture and move parts of it around, blend colors etc.

Would appreciate some guidance on what software to get started with.

 

[Yinzer]

YouTube is your friend. May take a few attempts to find a good video each time, but if you search for Photoshop and the name of the tool or action you're trying to do, you'll be surprised at how many videos come up and how quickly you'll learn what you need. Also helps to list the version you're using, such as CS3, CS4, CS5, etc.

 

[Spooler]

Jd, I think I know what you want to goof around with. It's good to have a subject to start..cars are great...I like cars and bikes

I use PS7 which has an easy to use toolbar.

Find the "Polygonal lasso tool" lol and begin practice by tracing around objects in a photo... to move: cut and paste just like text. Once you cut and paste can also change colr /size

I use the cloan stamp tool for touchup and also effects but thats later..takes time.

Once you Master you will realize that just about anything you can imagine in your mind, you can make a snapshot of.

For example: I had a nightmare a few years ago where i was riding my bike on Mullholland, minding my own buisness when suddenly I was attacked from the rear by a huge pack of riders, all clones of myself.

Kinda looked like this

- - - Updated - - -

 

[blue_myriddn]

That is a very broad question and does depend a lot on what version of photoshop you are using. A few "keywords" or concepts that are good for general all around photo/image editing though are:

1. Feather. This is a very powerful element for tweaking things - going with larger or smaller numbers depending on what you are doing.
2. Make use of transparency & layers. Name your layers. Put your layers in folders. organization can help a lot.
3. duplicate often. Often with photoshop you tend to need to monkey around until you find what works. Having a baseline of what it looked like before to compare against is crucial for that. Also if your monkeying totally screws up the image, you can go backwards.
4. There are 2 erasers that I use a lot - pencil & brush. Brush is great for blending, pencils is great for erasing.
5. Image -> Adjust -> Shadow's Highlight. Very useful for car photos
6. Image -> adjust -> Hue/saturation. the way to change the colors of things.
7. Get familiar with the keyboard shortcuts
8. Clone stamp/Magic eraser are good
9. Burn/dodge can be very useful for altering images as well. Smudge is how a lot of people doctor photos of models, but that is pretty damn tricky to do without screwing up.

Lists go on and on - but maybe that gets you started.

 

[JD Cross]

At the moment I don't have any software so guidance appreciated.
Spooler has suggested Photoshop 7 but I see that's about $240 per year.

I was hoping to find some beginners/learners software for less money as I won't be a heavy user.

 

[jwmelvin]

Start with GIMP. It does not have some of the nice advanced tools of Photoshop but you can learn a ton with it. I would argue that you learn more by not having some of the Photoshop automagic.

 

[Spooler]

JD,

PS7 240.00 per year ?? I bought mine of the shelf .

Forget 7..above advice is correct..start with something basic.

 

[JD Cross]

I downloaded GIMP and learning how it works now.
Many thanks!!!