How did you (as in everyone) become as skilled as you are with photoshop?

did you just use tutorials? classes? or did you learn just by messing around with it?

I'm new to photoshop and want to know what works the best for the general people.

i teached myself really.. but i did read some tutorials, but i find learning how to do things yourself is best..

Probubly the best way is to start off by doing tutorials from www.good-tutorials.com and get to know photoshop and once you know your way around the program start developing your own style of designing and practice

@Tom...Thats not very nice lol I haven't seen Andy's work but jeez lol

Good idea Colin! I see theres a tutorial on Zymic on how to make a layout, that's the main thing i need to do. i need to learn how to make layouts in photoshop. So i figure i'll look at the tutorial, mess around with some stuff, probably look at some other tutorials and i should be pretty well set.

Thanks!

Yeah thats a good tutorial for design, the coding part is not as good as it could be...
For a good css coding tutorial either look at this:
http://www.samueljesse.info/tutorials/CSS/
I found that useful or
http://www.good-tutorials.com/tutorials/css
Could help also.

A good way to start would probably be trying tutorials from Pixel2Life and sites like PSDTuts. Eventually you will not need a tutorial to do what you want and you can just look at something and figure out how it was done.

i remember when i was 11, i used to download free zymic templates and try to figure out how they were made. I used to think you had to make each bg image separately and put them in a table. It took me like three months to figure out what the slice tool did.
i kinda quit making layouts like a year ago, though. I'm more interested in printed media.

i learned everything i know on my own......

I learned everything I know from sig-making tuts at planetrenders.net/forums

I started with Elements, and after I learned how everything worked, I moved onto CS2, and learned how to set everything the way I liked it. (Layer styles, the opacity and color for shadows, etc.) After that, I looked through DeviantArt to see what other artists were doing, and I went through a couple tutorials.

What does the slice tool do?

im guessing it slices things... maybe images... idk...

It came to me, like a etc etc *ego filled rantings*

nah, mostly tutorials at first, and tons and tons of practice.

I got skills with a lot of practice but reading tutorials from what i needed, for example when i wanted some effect i looked for the tutorial and i apply it to my template =) thats how, tutorials+practice worked for me

My cousin taught me the basics and what certain features do in CS2 lol. I just then messed around with them alot and used tutorials.

My brother really helped me to get to know all of the tools, but the images and pictures i made were really by just messing around. I think messing around can create amazing things.

Yes, well considering my cousin "messed around" for two years and got really good at it, I think so too. Though he stopped using Photoshop once he got addicted to fucking WoW and now I'm fucking better at it than him lol.