Question for the experts

[Fatman116]

Hi, I'm new to the site. It looks great!

I was wondering how you got so good at photoshop/other programs? I want to get good at photoshop and I want to know what you did you get as good as you are now. I've been doing tutorials online (good-tutorials.com, thats how I found this site) and those have helped me a bit. Did you recieve any formal training or just learned by yourself?

Any tips would be great! (I have Photoshop CS btw)

[Ryan]

I started out 7 years ago when i was 13 on a 533mhz celeron with 64mb ram piece of crap. My first site i created was a gaming related website for the game called Red Alert 2. It was so horrible, I used homestead to make that site! I then got Flash 3 (only program that ran fast on my computer so this is why I started with flash..). I had to learn the hard way of making a real site since I did not have programs to do slicing for me. So what I had to do was make the whole layout in Flash then select the whole layout and drag it around and slice it by free hand all in flash! Here a few examples of these sites:

http://www.thedesignworld.com/templates/clantemplate2
http://www.thedesignworld.com/templates/counterstrike6

Then Flash 5 came out a couple years later and I was still on my crappy old computer! So I still couldnt use photoshop. I then created

http://www.loserlabeled.com/skatevids.shtml

This was my very first huge site!

I started to learn how to add php programs and manage mysql when I was around 17 years old. At this time my Flash skills were very good!

I then moved on from LoserLabeled and went to WebDogPro and made a fully functional database site when I was 18. I bought a new computer! Super fast one with a nice huge LCD Monitor ofcourse. So now I can use Photoshop Yay! I then totally 100% stopped using flash for some reason, I started whipping out templates easily in Photoshop due to all the stuff I learned the hard way using Flash!

All I got to say slicing was a sinch since I got Photoshop!

Here are my very first Photoshop Templates :roll:

http://www.thedesignworld.com/templates/counterstrike8/

http://www.thedesignworld.com/templates/hardwire/

I progressed through out the months:

http://www.thedesignworld.com/templates/counterstrike9/

http://www.thedesignworld.com/templates/halo2/

I left WebDogPro due to some BULLSHIT, but I wont get into that. I then started up TheDesignWorld.com! TheDesignWorld.com was launched late in December 2004. So TDW is still a baby :D

I barely use flash lately! I actually just got back into the swing of things, its more fun since I got Photoshop knowledge now and somewhat of knowledge left in Flash.

You can view my latest work at my new network sites I am working on. You can get links to these network sites at:

http://www.thedesignworld.com

Also check:

http://www.thedesignworld.com/webtemplates.php for my latest free web templates :D

[DarkRage]

Some people like to take classes in school like graphics class or web design class if you have it. I could have taken it but I didnt have room. I try to learn from just trying stuff out.... It takes time... So dont give up

[murphj]

id like to take a web design class to do stuff like ryan has done
i figured out how to do what i can do so far just looking at tutorials, this is the best ive got to so far: http://home.exetel.com.au/fmv/jamesmurphy

[young]

yea alot of practicew helps!!

[xXcurSedXx]

www.pixel2life.com is good.

[young]

all good stuff really... :)