books I have on how to learn to use Photoshop;

Scott Kelby's 7-point system. This was the only one I had heard of so I started with it. Probably not the best book for beginning Photoshoppers but it does teach you a workflow for improving photographs. It's heavily into ACR so keep that in mind. Since what I really want to do is make fantasy/surreal pictures this was a disappointment.

I wish I had started with Adobe Classroom in a Book. I bought it used off of Amazon...

I've been messing around with trying to produce a pleasing digitally painted landscape.

How to do this in a high key dreamy style has eluded me.

At least I live in a part of the world that has no shortage of woods/meadows for me to photograph and then Photoshop.

I guess this is the danger of being self taught. I just realized that PS brushes have NAMES! That sure makes painting with them easier than just using the thumbnails. lol

Also the Edit>Fade command seems to work on all filters...including Plug-Ins! ^5 :-) This is really cool. Especially with the Medhi kaleidoscope filter. Attached is a foxglove picture manipulated in such a way.

This apparently is the closet that Peter will give to a tut so i thought it wise to post here so that we all know where it is There are some great versions of his sketch scattered around the photo art site, there are some
here, here and here

anyway this is his workflow in his own words

...

http://rutt.smugmug.com/gallery/1444752