Tips on Photoshop

Does your computer at home or at work have a copy of Photoshop on it but you have no idea how to use it?  Join the club.  I've had Photoshop at work for about four years now and as an editor on five radio station websites, I've had to learn how to use it, mostly through trial and error.  It's a very powerful but extremely complicated program.

Recently I began the process of actually learning Photoshop through online tutorials.  Most online tutorials I've seen are written by people who know the software but have no idea how to write or teach.  But after a lot of searching (and more trial and error) I found a set of tutorials that actually teaches.

www.photoshopessentials.com/basics

You'll find step by step instructions for producing various Photoshop effects as well as keyboard shortcuts and background information on why the effect works as it does.

The lightning tutorial showed me how to produce the lightning bolt in this image.  It looks simple but the effect actually involved several steps, including guassian blur and "difference clouds," whatever they are.