Photoshop is as intimidating as hell. I spent the longest time just looking at the interface and closing it. Then, Shaunna (mrs_starkers) put up a thread, and the rank amateurs went wild. This started me learning. My envy of Po’Smedley’s and Skinhit’s abilities to create icons, walls and crazy shops (and some friends who wanted to try as well), kept me going.

Some like Gimp more, others want to learn the industry gold standard. Photographers might want Lightroom more than Photoshop.

You want to start creating/fixing/enhancing images, but you don’t know where or how to start.

There are online courses such as Photoshop Week at creativeLive, there are books (whose to borrow/buy?). What should you do?

There’s a set of tutorials (limited a bit by the fact they came out in February 2011…before the CreativeCloud happened), and Photoshop has changed some since then, but what hasn’t changed is the tool basics. I’m going back and am determined to learn the “Pen Tool”, for example.

You can find them here: http://lifehacker.com/5758404/learn-the-basics-of-photoshop-the-complete-guide

You can start there, because it discusses and teaches the rudiments of some of the Photoshop tools, and it is an entry point…and it’s quick and dirty. Give it a shot, you never know what you’ll learn!

The main thing is to start.