7 Foot

I've just bought an iMac and have been given a copy of CS3 by a friend who is an illustrator. I've got no instructions with it and I haven't the faintest idea what I'm doing BUT I'm very, very keen to learn.

Can someone point me in the best direction to start learning basic (and by God I mean BASIC) Photoshop skills?

Markus

Have a look at the books mentioned here. The Dummies guide is probably quite a good one to learn.

Also have a look here. If you're going to be doing anything in regards to photography, then "The Photoshop® CS3 Book for Digital Photographers" by Scott Kelby is probably going to be rather good, not sure if he has a general one, but some of the techniques you'd use for photography might be handy for normal use. If it's anything like his guide to Digital Photography then it's very straight forward to follow.

It may also be worth popping over to Peachpit and searching on Photoshop CS3 and it will throw up a few items.

One of the things when it comes to learning Photoshop is to think about what you're going to use it for, as you can use that to steer you to a more specific guide, for example photography.

Having a read of the documentation that comes with Photoshop might be a good idea too, as it might give you a general idea of how it works.

I'm trying to remember how I learnt to use PS, but it was about 15 years ago and my memory isn't what it used to be, plus my PS skills have slipped as I've not used it on a daily basis for about 10 years (used to be a typesetter many years ago and used PS a lot for cut-outs and other things)

** edit **
There is a disk within the CS3 package called "Adobe Photoshop CS3 MAC Content Extra and Resources.dmg" this contains various things, one of which is a Documentation folder and that has a 42MB PDF file which is the documentation for PS3 (there are other disks for the other apps within CS3). I'd ask your friend if they could lend you the disk so you can copy that file off, or, failing that, if you PM/Email me, I can probably send you a copy.