cs6 information

[Hog Wild graphics]

Okay I'm a flexi guy. I made the jump and bought cs6. I've decided I want to start adding life to my designs. I know it's going to take a long time to get the hang of photoshop but can someone help me get some material to get started.

I'm going on a 10 day vacation and would like to have some books to read about the basics of photoshop. Any information would be great. I know a lot of frustration will be coming but this is something I want to do to take my business to the next level.

I downloaded ps6 do I need to download any of the other applications. indesign, dreamweaver, firework, etc.?

 

[SightLine]

Illustrator will be the other important one to get...

 

[4R Graphics]

Yes get illustrator.

You can buy the "classroom in a book" books for photoshop and Illustrator they are written by adobe and are what a lot of the colleges use for teaching. They will help you learn the basics then do some googling on tutorials and you will find lots of free stuff but learn the basics first.

If you have been using Flexi for vector and rastor graphics you are going to be blown away by photoshop and Illustrator.

If you learn them you will be glad you did.

If you can only find books for CS5 thats fine not a lot different between CS5 and CS6 the biggest thing I have really noticed is that CS6 Illustrator is 64bit so no more not responding and waiting on the program.

 

[Kevin-shopVOX]

You can also use youtube and lynda.com for great references. I would definitely get Illustrator if you have access to it via the creative cloud.

 

[genericname]

You can also use youtube and lynda.com for great references. I would definitely get Illustrator if you have access to it via the creative cloud.

+1

I know some can absorb information from books easily, but when dealing with an environment like Photoshop and Illustrator, I do best by seeing and doing. Nothing helps better than the visual tutorials at lynda.com

 

[WildWestDesigns]

+1

I know some can absorb information from books easily, but when dealing with an environment like Photoshop and Illustrator, I do best by seeing and doing. Nothing helps better than the visual tutorials at lynda.com

Another +1 for lynda.com. It has been a great resource for getting into programs like these.

 

[BPI Color]

Classroom in a Book is probably your best bet if you have no other experience with Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign. Once you have those under you're belt check out the WOW series by Peachpit Press. It's a tougher slog but worth it. I'd recommend getting the Classroom in a Book for Acrobat too.
Good luck.

 

[royster13]

I have done a lot of learning but I sure do not like doing it from a book.....Lynda is great or Youtube if you are a little more patient in looking for things....

 

[Perks]

llustrator CS Accelerated books pub. young.jin.com

 

[Baz]

I learned from reading the Classroom in a book series. It was really well structured and worked itself through all the tools gradually one by one.

The thing is with the online tutorials and third party books is that they make you do all kinds of exercises. But what's the point if you don't know where the tools are or what the proper terminology is.

Start with the basics and it will be allot less frustrating to learn.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

The thing is with the online tutorials and third party books is that they make you do all kinds of exercises. But what's the point if you don't know where the tools are or what the proper terminology is.

Lynda.com does (or atleast did) have lectures that dealt with just the design space and tools.

I have found that for myself (maybe not for others) though that having an exercise to do helps retain more then just reading about it. But learning is different for everyone.

 

[Baz]

With classroom in a book you also have to follow it while using the program. And it has a cd with art that will be needed for some exercises.

I admit i have not gone to Lynda.com to learn anything from it so i cannot say how it's tutorials are set up. But it is one of the most popular Adobe learning sites.

 

[MikePro]

illustrator and photoshop are essential
bridge is nice to have for quick browsing of files and acrobat professional is a nice one, as well, for creating .pdf packages for multi-page documents.
also, get CadTools from hotdoor.com. great plugin for illustrator, although they don't have support for cs6, yet.

most of the other software available in the suite is more geared towards web development and animation.
indesign may be another useful tool for layouts, but I still prefer illustrator to keep it simple.

as far as tutorials are concerned, if you bought the software from Adobe... they have tutorial videos available to you for FREE via their website.
i also learned a great deal from Lynda.com during my years at school. it was a requirement to have an account for my classes, which seems stupid since I was paying for a class to tell me to pay for an account that taught me what the class should have been... anyhow, that's another rant.
aside from that, you can view most of the tutorials via youTube. just search "Adobe Illustrator tutorial" and take a nice long trip down the rabbit-hole.

 

[BPI Color]

One last dig. Buy the standard suite. You won't need Dreamweaver and Flash unless you plan on doing your own web designs. That's a whole separate bucket of pain. But for little more then the cost of Illustrator and Photoshop you will get Indesign and Acrobat too. At some point, you're going to need them all. Once you learn Illustrator, you've half-way learned Indesign. Acrobat is handy to have when submitting softproofs to clients. Especially for some of the security features which prevent an unscrupulous client from taking your softproof to another sign shop for printing.
Once again, good luck...