Assembly « Design « Photoshop Tutorials

Ask a chef the most important aspect of great cooking, and usually the word is "Ingredients"! Finding and selecting quality images is absolutely essential! It can be tedious - and sometimes fun, but it rarely goes quickly! The "Resources" link at the top and left of all PST pages has a great listing of royalty free images! (While i was teaching myself to do this stuff, i made way too much use of images.google.com - and only once requested permission to use someone's photo. I think it VERY wise to break that habit by never starting it! You may not want people using your artwork, and photography is just that. Words to the wise-guys and wise-gals!) I have ended up using the top link on most of my works since i started here at Photoshop Talent. www.sxc.hu - called stock.xchng vi - is a great great resource indeed! Many of the other sites in that list have a small fraction of the variety of images here. I'm fortunate that i am a digital photographer, so sometimes i can go shoot something to use (or i can use something i have already taken like the water tower in this piece)! If you choose to take your own shots, use a camera with at least 3 Megapixels, even if you have to borrow one. (SOME City and University Libraries have cameras you can check out. Worth checking on!) When[\if] you shoot your photos either for a particular artwork or for possible later use (like 90% of my photos) ??? it is always wise to get several photos, from several angles! The more choices you have latter, the better your image! If ONE of 5 shots of something is blurry, no problem, you still have 4. If you only TAKE one - and it is blurry....... So. More about shooting digital photos in a later tutorial. I want to dig into this contest! PLEASE NOTE In the course of this "Tut" -- i not only "chop" some photos, i really remake the entire water tower "from scratch" and then 'trick it up' to look like a photo! There really is more to this tutorial (and un-entered entry) than might meet the eye! Also: Step #12 contains a few valuable hints and shortcuts - PLUS some great ways to teach yourself shortcuts. It is all text, but i try to format in a readable way so you can go step by step.