graphics question, can you help???

[imported_ave]

Ive kinda asked this before but wasnt specific enough, so bear with me....:blush:

I am in need of some pointers (as a part time and self taught user of flash i do not know where to go for the info i require, or im to thick to work it out .... )

I wanna know basically how i can learn to make graphics lke (lets go for the big one huh?)

http://www.2advanced.com/flashindex.htm

I realise this would take one person many millenia to do on their own and i could never hope to quickly learn the skills required to make a site like this , but its mainly the bitmap/jpeg/gifs ?? whatever they are main graphics.
These type of graphics are becoming the main stay of the web and as i hope to one day get paid for this i would like to know the best book/course etc to do to aquire the knowledge to make clean menu style buttons of this quality (not the chunky bevel type stuff)
Im assuming they use Photoshop or Fireworks or some similar package if so is there a book which covers this for either package??

Any help here Much appreciated :)

[DDD]

Photoshop books I recommend "Down and Dirty Tricks" for photoshop 7. And "Photoshop most wanted" The is a sticky post with all the tutorials in the world at the top of this board. For flash I dunno my flash is not the strongest but I have some books from friends of Ed and Macromedia Press. Then of course trial and error is the best way.

[imported_ave]

"Down and Dirty Tricks" for photoshop 7

so does that cover designing Navigational elements etc for web pages ??

[DDD]

nope....you may want to look at Image Ready or Fireworks for that. To sit and explain the whole ball of wax would be very hard since I personally use a large assortment of tools to complete a site. Most being Photoshop for static effect and special effects. Fireworks for vector graphics and Image slicing and navigation rollovers, Flash for advanced interactivity, And Dreamweaver to bring it together. Then there are things like shockwave, swift, max and plasma that I use from time to time. It all depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

[imported_ave]

hehe yes i realise that it would be impossble for you to say , here is a book which will teach you everything you need, if only huh =)

I think i will get a book on fireworks MX as i have it but have never really used it, i have already ordered a photoshop book (new masters) and if i get one on fireworks that should collectively give me enough knowledge to at least creat semi proffesional looking graphics :)
cheers for the help

[DDD]

yes it should good. And dont be afraid to try new things like video (which I am learning now) and dont forget flash.

[BBatPA]

To learn Fireworks just use the tutorials that come with it and search Google for Fireworks tutorials. Also look in That's how I started with graphics....

I think you'll find Fireworks very easy to learn...I know I did....It has it's limitations, but for round-trip editing to and from Flash it can't be beat (not to mention it's native format is .png which supports transparency).

PhotoShop is the king of image editing software though and you'll want to move up to that eventually.

Here's a few sites that'll get you started with Fireworks:

http://www.caughtinthefire.com/
http://www.playingwithfire.com/
http://www.fwzone.net/

[imported_ave]

cheers man thatll save me a few £s on a fireworks book :thumb:

[DDD]

www.solardreamstudios.com has some pretty cool FW tuts

[imported_ave]

will check that too
cheers :beam:

[imported_ave]

just got "new masters of photoshop" todday worked through just half of one tutorial and feel i already know about 100x's more than i did this morning....

Great book....now just gotta learn the rest of the 400 odd pages (although i think il skip certain bits) and learn a bit of fireworks to back it up, cheers for all your help and pointers guys and gals....