Looking for basic Photoshop tutorials / answers to basic questions

[quaternion]

Hi,

I have downloaded a Photoshop Elements 7 trial, and in a month, I am planning to buy a wacom bamboo fun medium (which contains Photoshop Elements 5) and so to downgrade to Elements 5.

I wanted to practice with Elements 7 first, this being my first experience with Photoshop. What I used before was the free tool Artweaver. I am looking for basic tutorials on Photoshop, and as there is an enormous lot on the web I wanted to ask here for the best tutorials (video, text, images, whatever). Here are some questions on my mind which I hope to be answered:

- Which are good brushes for starting out with painting? Which is generally used for sketching outlines, filling with colour, creating soft gradients? What to start painting with?

- Which are the keyboard shortcuts for, let's say, changing brush size, color pick tool, and other shortcuts one should know?

- I practice a lot from references. let's say I arrange the ref pic next to my actual pic nicely, and chose a nice brush. Can I save that combination to continue later the very same way?

Of cours, the most important is the first question: how to begin painting? I'd really be grateful for links to good tutorials on this.

Thanks a lot in advance!

[Rist]

The best tutorials I have come across for photoshop have been from Lynda.com

As for your questions...

1. the round hard brush will do fine, with pressure sensitive flow, and opacity if you want for more smooth stokes. DONT use SOFT edged brush. You 'can' us it to soften large areas, but in general use FLOW (a setting for every brush) set at around 20% to 40% or pressure sensitive.

2.

Brush size: [ and ]
Colour Piick: I or use Alt while using a brush for a quick colour pick.
Undo: Alt + Ctrl + z
Duplicate selected layer: Ctrl + J
reset colours to default: D
Deselect: Ctrl + D
L: Lasso
M: Marque
Ctrl + Q: WARNING this closes the software and can create some BIG mistakes (unsaved work) if you are not careful with it.
Ctrl + T: Free Transform
Too many to list. You should go to Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts

3: Make your reference a layer (double click it if its a background layer), go to Image > Canvas Size. Change the measurements to PERCENTAGE, and look at those arrows Below; Whichever side you want our drawing to be at, point the oppisite way! All you need to do now is change the WIDTH value to 200.

3 alternative: I think another way is to arrange all your workspace and then go to WINDOW > WORKSPACE and choose SAVE WORKSPACE. Name it clearly and there you go. To select this workspace in the future, just go to the bottom of WINDOW > WORKSPACE.



NOTE: These tips are for photoshop CS3, if some of these do not work this will be why.