Does anyone know where I can find a tutorial and what programs are needed, other than photoshop, to create stuff like avatars and banners like this thread www.abovetopsecret.com...

I've seen some good talent like JAK and KingLizard and many others I can't think of at the moment so I wanted to know how they do it and wanted to try something for myself. Thanks for your help.

9890

I understand Photoshop is a great program. I'm sure there is a tutorial included with the program.

People use paintshop pro, fireworks, gimp, and other graphic programs. Do a search on any of those names. Photoshop is the top dawg but not everyone can afford the hefty price tag.

Photoshop you laenr best by doing a few tutorials indeed, but nothing will make you learn faster then just using it and trying out what it can do, it's not that hard when you get to know the basics.

Ok thanks for the help. I have photoshop cs, but it can be a little confuzzling. How do you take two pictures and put something off on picture and put it in the other picture?
Thanks again gor the help.

Go to www.worth1000.com they have tutorials and brilliant examples of what you can do with photoshop.

Couldn't agree with ya more....

W1K has step-by-step instructions to guide you through it all....

Here's another website I use frequently...
www.thewebmachine.com...

You really just have to spend time playing around in Photoshop to learn its versatility....The best tip I can give to you is to learn the value of layers....It's all about layers, vector masks and channels......Learn to organize them too - They have some great organizational tips over at W1K

Feel free to U2U if you have any specific questions

www.good-tutorials.com

That site rocks, its how I get most of the tutorials for my avatars and such, check em out, they groovy =D

Using Photoshop isn't too hard... but from what I remember it comes with a very good tutorial for it. I only wish i still had my Web Design Class, because now I have no Photoshop to work with... only Paint or something...

I recommend you just explore the program with reckless abandon. Press every button slide every slider. Go ahead and read about using layers somewhere and apply everything you learn. Don’t expect to be a Picasso your first day just have fun and quality will be a natural progression. This is exactly how I learned how to use Photoshop.

Lots of great information guys Thanks for all the help. Just to be clear.... layering is how you get two pictures together right? Thanks again

you can use PhotoPaint, thats what i use... the Corel website has a couple of goodies for that kind of work..

Layers is like stacking transparencies (clear plastic sheets) on top of each other each with a portion of the full image on each sheet. When you look through all the transparencies the full image can be viewed. Say the image was of a man and you were using 2 layers, one with a head and the other with a body. When you view both stacked layers you would see the entire image of the man. If you turned off the head layer you would only see the body.

Say you wanted to replace someone’s head with another head. To combine two images you would open the first image and then add the other image to the workspace so that both images would be layered (one on top of the other). The top layer would be of the head you want to add to the body. You would mask or erase everything but the head so the top layer is clear with an isolated head. Then you position that head over the bottom layer so that it covers the other head. When you look through both layers you now see the entire image of a man that had his head replaced.

This is the condensed version and there are a lot of other things that you will need to do to make it look realistic but you can start from here and work up your knowledge.