Learning to Use Photoshop

[Nightender]

I've been drawing for a long time and I just installed Photoshop (CS2, since Adobe offers it for free). My hope is to draw and color images that go with my stories and use them as covers and/or sell them as prints one day. It's ambitious, but one has to dream first.

Does anyone have any suggestions to help me get started?

 

[Penpilot]

Does Adobe offer Illustrator for free? I believe that is for drawing. Photoshop is for well... manipulating photos, but if it does what you want it to do, more power to you.

As for getting started, go to youtube. I haven't checked lately, but I'm sure there are lots of tutorials on there that will get you familiarized with the program and what features it has. From past experience, the actual adobe website isn't all that useful for learning how to do things. Adobe has it in their best interests NOT to tell you how to use their programs because they want you to sign up for their how-to classes that are hundreds of dollars to take.

 

[Svrtnsse]

You can download Adobe Creative Suit 2 for free from their website. Whether or not it's actually legal to use it if you haven't purchased an actual license for it is a different matter. It's also a matter not even Adobe themselves seem to really care about.

This article explains what happened and where to download the software: Adobe offering Creative Suite 2 for free, but they didn't mean to - TechSpot

Short version: They messed up and made it available for free and then never bothered to block it again.

As for where to start learning how to use it. Perhaps Nihal would have some suggestions?

EDIT:
Adobe CS 2 includes both Photoshop and Illustrator as well as some other programs I don't remember.

 

[Alexandra]

Photoshop is a brilliant program and can be, and is, used for much more than manipulating photos—tis used for manipulating images, all kinds if images including those you create yourself. There are a myriad of books and magazines focused on Photoshop how-tos, tips, and tutorials, a few tailored google searches will reveal just how much is available.

 

[Lunaairis]

Yeah. I use photoshop for all my art. I would recommend getting a drawing tablet like a Wacom intuis, (which was once called a Wacom bamboo) there are other brands which have cheaper tablets but I don't know how good they are.

Any way drawing with photoshop is pretty easy. There are hundreds of tutorials online which will tell you what and how to use each tool. Go to deviant arts- Divine-Tutorials on deviantART - for some good free tutorials.

 

[Rinzei]

Does Adobe offer Illustrator for free? I believe that is for drawing. Photoshop is for well... manipulating photos, but if it does what you want it to do, more power to you.

Illustrator is more for use in design where you need vector graphics. So most, other than vector artists of course, tend to use Photoshop due to it's ease of manipulation, brushes, etc. Other popular art programs are Corel Painter and PaintToolSAI.


My suggestion for getting a feel for things is to start with pencil/pen drawings, scan them in with a scanner, and use Photoshop to colour them - it'll help get you familiar with the tools. This is easily done with Layers - set your Sketch/Drawing on a layer (not the Background one) and set the Layer Mode to Multiply - this means that it's transparent and will allow images/colour on lower layers to show through. Then, create a layer beneath your drawing and start colouring! It keeps your lineart untouched in case you make mistakes. You can either colour each colour/object on a separate layer, or do it all in one - it's really a preference thing. The more layers you have, the easier it is to fix/change something with out affecting everything else, but it does mean more memory, more to sift through, and means that the colours are separated from each other (you can merge these layers though, so the latter isn't such a big deal).

That's certainly not the only way to go about it - but it's a relevantly easy one for getting started and getting a feel for things. Once you feel more comfortable with the tools themselves, you can start looking at tutorials from others on how they do it and adapt as you see fit. There's plenty of YouTube videos on it, as well as people whom have posted segments on places like DeviantArt in the tutorial sections. There's also a good magazine called ImagineFX which you can download digitally or buy at most grocery stores or newsagent which is all tutorial and showcase for fantasy and scifi art. It also comes with a CD of brushes and tools, as well as reviews on artists tools (such as tablets, which Lunaairis mentioned).

 

[Jabrosky]

My suggestion for getting a feel for things is to start with pencil/pen drawings, scan them in with a scanner, and use Photoshop to colour them - it'll help get you familiar with the tools. This is easily done with Layers - set your Sketch/Drawing on a layer (not the Background one) and set the Layer Mode to Multiply - this means that it's transparent and will allow images/colour on lower layers to show through. Then, create a layer beneath your drawing and start colouring! It keeps your lineart untouched in case you make mistakes. You can either colour each colour/object on a separate layer, or do it all in one - it's really a preference thing. The more layers you have, the easier it is to fix/change something with out affecting everything else, but it does mean more memory, more to sift through, and means that the colours are separated from each other (you can merge these layers though, so the latter isn't such a big deal).

This is exactly the method I use for my own art, so I second the recommendation.

 

[Devor]

Lynda.com has some great tutorials, but it's a subscription website. You can get a free week, though, which can be enough time to get you started. I have Photoshop Essentials, the cheap-o version of the program, and while there are a lot of tools, it mostly works through selecting a section of the photo and running it through a filter. Once you understand the tools involved, you can take some time to fiddle with the filters on your own.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

I've been drawing for a long time and I just installed Photoshop (CS2, since Adobe offers it for free). My hope is to draw and color images that go with my stories and use them as covers and/or sell them as prints one day. It's ambitious, but one has to dream first.

Does anyone have any suggestions to help me get started?

If you buy a tablet (Wacom Bamboo is just under $100--I think I paid something in the $60-80 range, thanks to my bargain-hunting wife), you can start using techniques to draw on-screen. If you click the Flat Earth link, you may notice artistic improvements if you look at episode 1, then episode 2.

The characters in my sig are hand-drawn, while in the current game art, they're drawn using a tablet.

I think I'm a better artist than I was just a few months ago, and I can make better art faster. (I think I'm faster anyway.)

 

[Nihal]

Rinzei is right about the difference between Illustrator and Photoshop. Illustrator is a vector only program, even its brushes are vector shapes. You'll have no opacity-through-pressure-levels there, nor color blending, making it inadequate for digital painting.

Despite its misleading name Photoshop is a great program to paint digitally, not only retouch photos. In fact, it's the top choice of an impressive number of professional artists, way higher than 50% of them.

As Legendary Sidekick pointed a tablet is an important tool. You can draw with a mouse, but it won't be quick nor precise. Wacom tablets are cheaper than they were 10 years ago and they're top quality, even the cheaper ones, lasting years. Mine is ~5 years old. My first tablet was from a generic brand (same price of a wacom bamboo nowadays), it didn't last a whole year and their tech support sent back another defective tablet for replacement, haha. Just make sure to get a model with "pressure levels".

Now, to paint digitally you must get used to your tools. It feel odds at first to draw watching the screen instead down to the surface you're using, but I assure you you'll catch up in no time. You must get more intimate with the software you'll use. If you need photoshop applied to illustration tutorials deviantart is a good place to search. They're free, and made by artists, not someone just showing the software and speculating how it would be used by one. Some artists do livestreams or youtube tutorials. Seek them!

Keep in mind you don't need to follow exactly the process someone uses. Some people create neat pencil sketches, scan and paint. Other make half-assed digital sketches and messily overpaint them (me!). The point here is developing your own way of painting, doing what's more comfortable to you, just make sure to experiment with everything you can. You don't know what you'll like if you don't try, even if it's "out of your style"; you don't know if it won't become your style in 2 or 20 years.

Lastly, a huge mash up of tutorials and theories that apply even to other mediums like traditional painting: Digital Painting & Concept Art with Photoshop

I'll tell you, the color theory there is right on the spot!

Oh, and a bonus! Here is my old and half assed tutorial covering some techniques to make scanned lineart transparent so you can paint on a layer behind it: [PT and EN|Beginner] Lineart: Scan to Colors I by vielmond on deviantART
It's huge because it's step-by-step and bilingual. My English was worse! D:

 

[ascanius]

While I use The Gimp and not Photoshop I have found this site useful. Video Library — Ctrl+Paint - Digital Painting Simplified

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

Just to add a bit to what Nihal said, I went from scan-and-draw (using "text mode" on the scanner so there is only black and white, not shades of gray) to using the tablet for everything. I can't draw straight lines on a tablet, which is a serious limitation for making cartoony swords. Aside from that, I can draw cartoon faces better on a tablet than on paper now. In February, that was not the case. I use 200% zoom, and for my game here, I shrink images to 25%. (They look best at 50%, but I need images that fit this forum. That's 699 pixels by the way. Maybe it's 700, but the grid on my map centers right if I have an odd number.)

My wife saw the file where I keep all of the player characters and major NPCs and thinks I should start illustrating the bed time stories I tell our daughters. That might actually be a fun project to try out...

...but my point is that having the right tools and putting them to use or experimenting is quite fun, and I'm happy with how much I've improved in a year just by pushing myself to be a little better every time I draw.

 

[Nihal]

@Legendary

I normally can't draw straight lines (on any medium!) either, but there is a trick!

Direct link to the right moment: EPISODE 36 Traditional Mediums - YouTube

... or watch it here, it's around 7:40.

[video=youtube_share;C3lApsNmdwM]http://youtu.be/C3lApsNmdwM?t=7m41s[/video]

Also, holding SHIFT on photoshop draws straight lines. I particularly favor doing it freehand, it blends better with most drawings.

You can rotate the canvas since Photoshop CS something by holding R, clicking on the canvas and dragging the cursor around. When you release the R key you'll be back to the original tool you were using. Pressing only R without clicking will select the rotate tool! ESC will return the canvas to the original orientation. That way you can emulate rotating a paper sheet around without being forced to spin your poor tablet around.

 

[Anniekins]

reading over the past comments i'm grinning and smiling. I use photoshop for painting and editing photo's...its not just photo manipulation. Ive a three part short vid on youtube exactly showing this as I felt some people thought my paintings were tracings or manipulations. It's a hard thing to learn, and ive been using it for over 4 years and am still learning. I love it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QolKWCwpZ4A