Help with Photoshop

[Lightwriter]

I am fairly new to digital photography. Fortunately the S2 makes learning pretty easy. I have Photoshop 7 and I'm about lost. I'm having trouble learning how to work with layers, especially. Can someone suggest the best tutorial book to learn with. I've looked at "Photoshop for Digital Photographers" and "Photoshop 7 WOW Book". I've seen good and bad reviews on both of those so I'm still not sure what to get. I have the Dummies Reference book, but it isn't as helpful as I thought it would be.
Any suggestions?

[Bill C]

The WOW book really isn't a 'learning' book, and the other book is good for specific topics, however, it really isn't a PhotoShop tutorial book. Layers are very important to learn, as well as blend modes. There are a lot of good sites/tutorials online - I suggest you go to your favorite search engine and enter 'photoshop tutorial layers'. Here is just one link ... scroll down and there are a couple of tutorial on Layer Basics and Blend Modes.
Good luck! Practice, Practice, Practice .... play with the layers, blend modes, and various opacities.

http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/photoshoplayers/
Bill

[toners]

For learning and becoming refreshed with how to work with specific elements or tools in Photoshop, be it layers, selections, lines, text and so on, I go straight to a little $10 book called Photoshop 7 in Easy Steps by Robert Shufflebotham. For learning how to apply Photoshop tools to optimize digital images, then I go to the heavy hitters like Scott Kelby (The Photoshop Book for digital Photographers) and Katrin Eismann (Photoshop Restoration and Retouching). And now that Photoshop CS is in the mail, I guess I will have to replenish all of those!

toners

[Lightwriter]

Hi Bill and Toners;
Thanks for the help. I went to the site you posted and it looks extremely helpful. I bookmarked it and a couple other links I found in there.
Has anyone played with CS yet? Can I upgrade the 7 to it? Will it be worth the expense?
Thanks again,
Alice(LightWriter)

[ballroom_boy]

PS CS is well worth the upgrade cost. There are so many new features with it. See this thread to see some of our member's favourite features:

http://theswampbbs.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=56

[toners]

While awaiting my copy of PS CS I've been working myself into a frenzy of anticipation by reading the stuff here:

http://www.photoshopuser.com/photoshopcs.html

Looks like Adobe was focusing on the needs of digital photographers with this upgrade.

[Marcel F]

Toners,
Thanks for the web site ... ;) This is a great site for PS users ..

Regards

Marcel

[petej]

I booked in a photoshop course at a local collage-- for me it seamed a lot simpler when its shown to you on a pc-- the cost was not that great and well worth it.

Peter

[Marcel F]

Peter ,

you are right , it looks so easy when doing it .. and so hard when trying to do it from a book .
just got the Photoshop Class rrom in a book .. Great book , but I would rather take a seminar .

We are not lucky in our technical college in greenville . I am afraid that I know more that the teacher .. I am looking at next year Adobe seminar one or three day ..

Have a Happy New-Year

Marcel