When I started at my current job I was daunted by two things: switching from mac to PC and having to work in Photoshop.
I tend to work quickest and most effectively in Fireworks, with Textmate, Transmit, Voodoopad, Linotype Font Explorer and other li’l mac apps making life so much easier. Shockingly, PCs aren’t as horrific as a mac user would imagine: the annoying paper clip thing (”Clippit”) seems to have disappeared and you can get adequate replacements for most essential apps (Ultraedit, Filezilla, Keynote). I also managed to get myself a copy of Fireworks.
Even so, my lack of photoshop skillz was a problem and I resolved to do at least one short tutorial every day. There are plenty of sites delivering tutorials or links to them, however the best one I found for n00bs was Shapeshed’s Photoshop 101, which simply goes through the toolbox week by week in order to clarify what each thing does. It was a revelation to find out what the oddly named Dodge, Burn and Smudge actually do. Photoshop is so bloated with features that, unless one runs through the basics, it can be impossible to work with.
Each time I run through a tutorial, I make a point of practicing on some of terrible stock photography I’ve found in our image library.
Before:
After (with additional dodge and burn):
Much better, I think.
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