Newest of Newbies

[mrlizard]

Good day, everyone.

I play around with several different applications, but learned most of what I know by experimentation.
I have an old version of PS at home, but can only use it to make funny pictures (like putting my head on my daughter's body).
I keep seeing suggestions in these forums on how to retouch photos images. But I'm so far behind the curve that I have no idea what most of the mentioned tools do.
What's dodging?
When do I add layers and why?
Heal?

Perhaps someone here can point me to a very basic set of tutorials (or informational web pages) that can get me started on what each tool does and how to use it.

Suggestions?

[Alan_P]

There are a lot of Photoshop videos on Youtube. That is a good place to start.

Alan

[Whacom]

Hey Mr Lizard!
I would strongly suggest you to buy a good PS-book. There's a lot out there, but I would especially recommend Scott Kelby's books. His "Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Digital Photographers" is great for newbies, you'll learn all the stuff you asked for and more. He does have books for earlier versions of PS, too.
The problem with random internet and youtube tutorials is that the quality varies - a lot. A lot of the things showed in tutorials on youtube etc are not the best, nor the fastest way to do it (even if there's good tutorials as well out there). In a book you'll also learn stuff that you didn't know you needed to know.
Good luck!

[palms]

Hi and welcome

I think there are a few of us hobbyists who started out only being able to cut and paste funny heads, but we all have to start somewhere !

Here is a web site that i found very useful , there is the basics section and then effects tuts which are all good and help you learn but start at the first few as these was done on older ps versions

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/basics/

can you say which version of ps you use ? it may help as some tools etc have changed over the years but you can still learn on older versions a lot

hope you enjoy and have fun with your learning curve

oh and dodging is not getting out of the way

Palms