Photoshop Tuts?

Can anybody suggest any Beginner type tut sites to learn Photoshop and Illustrator? I've googled for 2 hours, and can't find anything at the "Beginner" level.

All I can seem to find are tut's to individual projects from start to finish. Now perhaps this is how you learn, I might be looking at it wrong. But I'm really looking for something that will explaini what each function is and what it does and examples of such.

This is the only type of tuts I can find on Potoshop:

basic video tutorials, this is all you need: it's not free, but you can find most of these video tutorials on torrent sites

my personal fav: but it's not for beginners

I know this doesn't help you much but I remember when I first started using photoshop I was very confused. A year of making forum signatures for people on community websites and using it for 3D texturing really allowed me to understand the program. After learnnig a few tools it requires lots of experimenting to see what looks good and how to effectively use the program. After that it's easy as hell unless you want to start doing real graphics like drawing characters and such. Then you're in for a whole lifetime of learning.

Learn how to use layers properly and learn how to cut out images and inject them into other images and make it look real. Dick around with the filters until it looks epic. That's pretty much it.

I was just looking for the same thing a few days ago. I came across a thread here in the DL section. I think think the book was called 10 steps to learn Photoshop or something like that.

But when I downloaded the PDF it was a few hundred pages long.

Its going to really be hard to find what your looking for. Photoshop can do so much that the best way to learn is with the little projects, thats why it's mostly what your finding. Something that just starts going through all the different tools would be a pretty good sized book.

That being said, the best place I can recommend is youtube. go on there and do a search for beginner photoshop. There are a few accounts on there that have made a series of tutorials. There is a lot of beginners photoshop lesson 1, 2, 3, etc. or photoshop 101 part 1, 2, etc. Just do the search and then find the ones that sound the most basic and watch a few, if the first one doesn't do it for you then check out another one.

There is one guy that does some really good tutorials that he makes funny, he talks like he's arguing with his wife, and then does something like erase her wedding ring, or modify her body to make her fat. lol. or he talks like hes at work and his boss keeps coming around, and then he has a pic of where he wants to go on vacation and he'll show how to change it to look like its turned into a warzone. It sounds lame but its funny as hell when your watching it.

This is how I first learned the basic functions and then tips and tricks etc. Just going through some video tutorials like that I was able to make a set of photoprops that I started selling on ebay and I'm still selling the same set on my website 2 years later.

I recommend the youtube videos because you get to watch and listen so its more like having someone there showing you. Granted its easier for me cause I have multiple monitors and I can watch on one monitor while I have photoshop open on another so I can follow along. and a lot of time I'll have another resource site on my third monitor. You can still learn better with the videos though even with just one monitor, you'll just have to do a lot of switching between windows and pausing the tutorial, but watching is still the best way.

edit - the link you have in your first post is a good tutorial. After you go through some of the video tutorials, come back to that one and it will be easier. The text based instructions are easier after you have some experience. Good Luck. Photoshop can be a lot of fun.

Thanks guys I appreciate it

I'd second the photoshop top secret series, it was on here a year or two ago, the videos are absolutely brilliant and take you through it step by step so you can follow along.