Perhaps you a foreign leader who needs to brush up on your Photoshop skills for some nationalistic propaganda. Maybe you work at the art desk of an advertising agency and would like to curtail your airbrush abuse or avoid unfortunate monstrosities. Or you might simply be interested in learning and experimenting with Photoshop tools. Hongkiat has just posted links to 56 Absolutely Brilliant and Intriguing Photoshop Video Tutorials at Hongkiat.com. The hyperbolic name and some very cheesy images and effects aside, you may find some good material here. These video tutorials are easy to follow, with topics that include How to Apply Texture to Uneven Surfaces, Gritty Photo Effect, Vanishing Objects with Clone Tool, and 53 more! But please use these skills wisely and responsibly. Just because you can simulate water droplets or create a burnt map effect, doesn't mean you should.
Yet another profile and assessment of Photoshop alternatives has appeared: Free Alternatives to Photoshop With All the Bells, Whistles, Filters, & Layers, by Jolie O'Dell on ReadWriteWeb. O'Dell reviews 1) Photofiltre, 2) Paint.NET, 3) The GIMP, 4) Aviary, 5) Splashup, 6) flauntR, and 7) FotoFlexer. And here yet another reviewer finds GIMP to be a superior choice. "All things being equal, there's not a lot we can say to criticize GIMP. As an open source app, it is subject to continuous rounds of improvement; there is no free app that will duplicate the Photoshop experience as well as GIMP will."
Over at Six Revisions, Jacob Gube has posted an article with links to 35 Basic Tutorials to Get You Started with Photoshop. While it's geared to beginners, including the most basic "Getting Started" materials, it also highlights some tools that should be of interest to users with a bit more experience, such as manipulating images with scripting.
I have shared information about GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) software with the Art and Art History department in the past. It is a free, open-source alternative to Adobe Photoshop, and satisfies the needs of most people in need of an image editing and authoring program. Many people, however, learned image editing with Photoshop and prefer the familiarity of its look and feel.It shares all GIMP's advantages, including the long feature list and customisability, while addressing some common criticisms regarding the program's interface: GIMPshop modifies the menu structure to closely match Photoshop's, adjusts the program's terminology to match Adobe's, and, in the Windows version, uses a plugin called 'Deweirdifier' to combine the application's numerous windows in a similar manner to the MDI system used by most Windows graphics packages. While GIMPshop does not support Photoshop plugins, all GIMP's own plugins, filters, brushes, etc. remain available."
