So, I've got the Adobe Master Suite...
To me, p'shop seems like the place to start!

I've been putting off getting knee deep in this for a while, but we've taken some pics lately that I'm just diving in. The only thing I've done thus far, is cut my wife and daughter out of a pic... Obviously going to have some fun and put a background behind them, the hope being to create a couple holiday cards.

So:
What are the "must know" basics to start with in p'shop? There is just soooo much to learn and do, I'm not sure where to start.

 

The best way to learn pshop I guess is to put on some great tunes and start looking at tutorials online. You'll be amazed with what you can do and how time will fly by .

 

Depends what you want to do.

If you just want to enhance a picture, a few functions I use everytime.

Unsharp Mask : this enhances the sharpness of the edges. Especially useful if you have Canon gear.

Smart blur : softens everything but the edges.

Shadow/Highlight : Highlighting the shadows 10-20% usually looks great.

Auto Levels : 75% of the time, this fella gets right the color and contrast of a picture. If it doesn't, you'll have to play with hue/saturation, curves ... etc to get to a result you like.

Don't forget to Crop if necessary.


If you're going for more fancy stuff, the best place is online tutorials, and copy what you like. I used to use Good-Tutorials - Newest Tutorials , but haven't been on there in a while, not sure if it's still any good.

And don't forget TS ... some are pretty good over here.

 

Take a look at this;
YouTube - You Suck at Photoshop #1: Distort, Warp, & Layer Effects

 

An even better one
YouTube - You Suck at Photoshop #3: Clone Stamp and Manual Cloning

 

Well... that'll keep me busy for a while!!