Hi! New to Photoshop CS4

[websquad]

Just installed Photoshop CS4 today. Things are different than my most recent package, Photoshop CS. And I confess I'm 'sorta lost.

The first, and only, full Photoshop tutorial I took was back with Photoshop 3. I then went to 4, 6, and CS. And with each of the upgrades I learned how to do what I had been doing, and in the process, picked up a few more good (or maybe bad) habits.

So, I'd like to buy a tutorial book and take the time to go through it. I'm using the 30-day free license that we get with the purchase of lynda.com's on-line tutorial. But I do think I'd like some sort of book.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

bob
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[dflynn]

90% of the time books are a waste of money if you're looking at just getting comfortable with a program. Everything is really online and CS4 is pretty similar to CS3 for the most part (what I've seen anyway) and since CS3 is in common use, most tutorials will be using that set up so images will highlight similar areas you'll be looking for.

http://www.photoshopsupport.com/photosh ... rials.html
if you scroll down to
" Total Training For Photoshop CS4 - Intro To Photoshop CS4 - 14 Free Videos - Plus 20% Discount Code For All Training"

You can watch an hour worth of video that will get your pretty comfortable with the layout of everything, then I'd suggest practicing and playing with it, and stick around on forums.

[websquad]

Thanks for your reply. As indicated in the initial post, I'm coming from CS, having skipped CS2 and CS3.

I have 30 days of free access to lynda.com, and hope to make good use of that. Of course, the problem is that I've sorta morphed along since Photoshop 3, and even with CS, was using only 5% of the product.

For some unknown reason, I can't get this site's tutorials to appear.

http://www.devppl.com/photoshop-tutorials/basics/

All I get, using both MSIE6 and FireFox 3, is the menu block on the left, the icons on the top (same as on this page I'm typing on), and a big blank white page where you would expect the main content to be. Is something broken? Can you recommend other tutorials?

[igjoe]

I myself have never read any books on Photoshop. I just started picking things up from reading tutorials and watching videos.

I would highly recommend the Photoshop User TV podcast. www.photoshopusertv.com It's one of my favorite podcasts.

If you are looking for a certain book, the "Dummy" books are usually pretty good and all of the guys who host Photoshop User TV have their own books that I hear a pretty good. Those authors would be Scott Kelby, Matt Klowskowski, and Dave Cross.

Best of luck with the new program!

[dflynn]

For some unknown reason, I can't get this site's tutorials to appear.

http://www.devppl.com/photoshop-tutorials/basics/

All I get, using both MSIE6 and FireFox 3, is the menu block on the left, the icons on the top (same as on this page I'm typing on), and a big blank white page where you would expect the main content to be. Is something broken? Can you recommend other tutorials?

DEVPPL is going through a big update so the tutorials may be affected by that.
When I'm looking for tutorials I usually just pop it into google and take whatever I can get off that. After you have an understanding of the interface of CS4 just go to any tutorial site and start hacking away at one after the other. Since new versions of Photoshop generally jsut add stuff you should have all the functionality needed for various tutorials and more.

[Mihai_alexandru]

I'd suggest Deke Mcclelland's One on One from Lynda.com. It's easy to learn from this guy, he's probably the best (and he's funny too), the only problem I found is that his video tutorials are kind of long.

I finished his series on CS2 and I'm doing CS4 now.