Smurf,
Sounds like you have what you need -- hardware, software, interest, and positive attitude!
Katrin Eismann's book(s) expect you to know Photoshop basics, but her explanations are detailed enough to help follow along. You say that you are a novice on Photoshop and Paintshop -- that means you know more than I do since I'm not even a novice with Paintshop (I started with Photoshop and found it hard to switch to anything else). You will find that RetouchPro tutorials are mostly written for Photoshop -- see
http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/
but there are a good number of members who use Paintshop and you can find posts from their work that can help you with skills in that program. Craig (Kraellin) is one of most avid Paintshop users/posters and there are others.
If you find that there are specific areas of Photo/Paint shop that you want to learn more about -- do a search and/or post a question. Same with a particular retouching technique. There is a ton of information already written here, but it's not always easy to find when you're new to the board (or even when you've been around for years and been thru a number of forum re-designs) -- it's always good to try a search first, but most folks here won't yell at you for asking a question that already been asked before -- this is a safe place for folks to ask questions, learn from each other and from the materials available. If some one person does bark at you, others will remind that person that we were all beginners at one time, and that we are all here to help and learn -- the learning never stops.
You can look at the Challenges (Retouching, Restoration, Manipulation, etc.)
http://www.retouchpro.com/challenges/index.php/cat/507 and find skills demonstrated there as well as in the Tips Forum (be sure to choose "From the Beginning" as your choice of viewing the threads to see everything that is available. If you get mixed up in how to view the forum threads, someone will help if you holler loud enough.
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/for...c&daysprune=-1 
07-17-2006, 12:10 PM
