I finally made the plunge and bought Photoshop CS6 earlier this year. It feels like you become a member of an exclusive club when you first get Photoshop. For a long time now, I have watched tutorials online showing what you could create in Photoshop, and always felt like an orphan with my nose pressed up against the window of a fancy restaurant looking in with great envy.

When I first started playing with it, I scoured the internet for any tutorial I could find.  But I didn’t want to just crop a photo, or brighten it up, I wanted to create something cool like all those photos and tutorials I had seen. So one quick Google search later, I found myself on Amazon looking at Corey Barkers Photoshop Down and Dirty Tricks for Designers.

Now as I said I had only just bought Photoshop, so had no money left for any further purchases so was quite happy to take advantage of Amazons have a sneak peek at the first 50 pages of this book for free. I know that this is a cunning marketing ploy, but it still feels like shoplifting to be able to read a big chunk of a book like this. Try walking out of Barnes & Noble with the first 50 pages ripped from a book and see how far you get.
So I read through the first few chapters and tried some of the techniques described, and had a huge amount of fun doing it, and even discovered a creative side I didn’t know I had.  Since then I am hooked – I ended up buying Corey’s book, so much for a free sneak peek, but I am having lots of fun, and learning a lot.

Here are just a few examples of what I put together – nothing mindblowing I know, but keep in mind these are the first few things I ever did in Photoshop.  It is a really different way to learn Photoshop, and you will pick up skills not mentioned in the standard Photoshop tutorials.