Learning Digital Manipulations.

[g2Owner_1]

Hi,
The time has come, when I must take a plung in to learning digital image retouching and restoration techniques.
The trouble is I don't know anything about photoshop or paintshop Pro.
I am currently evaluating Photoshop Elements 2. Although very good, it has its limitations. So i may end up buying Paintshop Pro coz, it offers far more functionality that Elements 2 at about the same price.
Now where do i learn the basics of these s/ws. I have just a bit idea about layers, masks, curves, levels . But not indepth enough to make them practically work . I want to start from ground zero and learn upwards.
So what books would you suggest. Keep in mind, I am not at all comfortable with either of these s/ws or any kind of image manipulation techniques. So I want books that start from the basics.

thanks in advance for all you recomendations.

[CyberDyneSystems]

If you go the Paint Shop Pro route,. the last time I bought a copy it,.. (it was version 5) it came with two excellent books,. one of which was a tutorial book.

I don't know where you live,. but in my neck of the woods there are a lot of bargain stores like "Job lot", "Building 19",.. etc. These places alomost allways have old computer books that are now virtually useless on the open marlet,.. so for 5 dollars you can get a How To Photoshop book that once sold for $45.00

Chances are it will be based on an older version of the software, but with imaging software despite the new vesions,. the basics don't change much. A book on Photoshop version 5 will still applty to PS 8 when it comes to clone tools,. smudge, channels, layers, history, etc....

[Claytonian]

Paint Shop Pro 8 (which just came out) is an excellent software package. It is similar in the basics to previous versions but Jasc has added so much more this time around. Granted, it will never replace Photoshop as the industry standard, but it is definitely my choice for graphics manipulation.

It also comes with a very good "learning center" this time that will get you started on a lot of the useful features. The program Help is also very good to learn how to use the software. Plus the boxed version comes with a book if you like doing your learning offline. Other books for this software would be helpful, I'm sure, but I think you could learn most of what you need from the Help or the Learning center in the program itself.

I'm not afilliated with Jasc or anything. I'm just a intermediate web designer/photographer who thinks PSP is a great program. Good luck learning!