Ten Basic Photoshop Skills - Must have ??

Hi all, I was thinking about collectively building a Photoshop Tutorial, with the 10 most basic and useful features it can provide new users, who want to get their hands dirty with Post Processing.

Can you post what 10 (or however many you can think of, not more than 10) skills are a MUST when working with photoshop?... Those posted the most, or the ones everyone agrees to, then would be the 10 topics (nothing fancy, just the basics for new forum users or anyone new to Photoshop who wants to improve their photos).

Think about those skills that can help anyone improve their photos. If you were new to Photoshop, what do you wish you knew then, that you know now?

lets find out

For me, it's something like this: (Imagine if we could come up with something that becomes a Stickie !!).

1- Photoshop Workspace (zooming, layering)
2- Auto Levels, Brightness & Contrast
3- Saturation and Tint
4- Filters: Sharpening and Noise Reduction
5- Photo size and resolution. Resizing, Framing an image.
6- Healing Brush and Cloning
7- Masking
8- Exporting and Saving, psd, tiff, png, etc.
9- ??
10- ??

While I think this might become a great thread and possibly a sticky let me direct everyone to one of our members' sites with wonderful tutorials:

http://www.ronbigelow.​com/articles/articles.​htm

Okay, not sure if this is what you're looking for, but these are the things I use most often in photoshop (not in any particular order)
1. Shadow/Highlight
2. Layer Masks (Adjustment layers like levels, curves...)
3. Levels
4. Hue/Saturation (knowing how much without overusing)
5. correct bicubic sampling when up-sizing AND when downsizing
6. Actions--don't use this every day, but it is a good thing to know how to set these up when you have multiple photos
7. Cloning tools (healing, spot healing, and good old clone)
8. straightening, stretching to correct for distortion, etc
9. ?
10.?

You've got most of what I'd put down, but for me, I also use a little liquify and lens distortion correction.

if we're talking about basics....then i'd say.
1. learn what the histogram represents and keep an eye on it.
1.5 learn how to use the zoom tool and hold space to move the image around.
2. levels
3. smart sharpen
4. clone tools(clone, healing, patch tool)
5. selection tools(and modifying your selections..feathering​, smooth, expand, etc)
6. hue/saturation
7. save as and save for web and the differences
8. learn how to make and use actions
9. crop
10. resize

this is my basic list..for advanced stuff, i'd add layers, blend modes, masking, channels, and all that stuff.

All of the above.

Also, if any of your images are intended for print in a publication, it's a MUST to learn how to work with CMYK. And at least a basic knowledge of the Press Plate to Paper process. Otherwise you could end up with a black splatter for a photograph...

Layer Masks are a must

1. Establishing a good workflow! cant believe this isnt on the top of eveyones list.
2. Layer Masks
3. Color Correction
4. Healing Brush
5. Cutting out objects
6. Levels or Curves
7. File Types
8. Black and White conversion
9. Resizing
10. Sharpening

Lets see what I come up with
- Using and building Actions
- Using layers
- Spot Heal, Heal, Clone, and patch tools to correct blemishes.
- Adobe Camera Raw (especially the new 4.1? version)
- Unsharp Mask
- The fine art fo cutting out a subject from background.
- using the new CS3 convert to B+W feature

That about covers everything above the very very basic level of cutting, pasting, resizing, and contrast/brightness/le​vels.

1. color correcting image
2. contrast correction/adjustments
3. touch up ie. remove small things that dont belong like pimples, dust spots, scratches
4. brightness/darnkess adjustments
5. turning shot b/w, sepia or what eve
6. sharpening and image
7. resizing or changing image save as (jpg, gif, tiff etc)
8. combing images
9 and 10, cant think of any more lol

1- Photoshop Workspace (zooming, layering)
2- Auto Levels, Brightness & Contrast
3- Saturation and Tint
4- Filters: Sharpening and Noise Reduction
5- Photo size and resolution. Resizing, Framing an image.
6- Healing Brush and Cloning
7- Masking
8- Exporting and Saving, psd, tiff, png, etc.
...............
9- layers and none destructive editing
10-color profiles for the web and for printing

1/ Shadow / Highlights
2/ Sharpening your photo, various technics using different ways
3/ What order of process to carry out pp
4/ Learning ways to make a work flow or automating certain jobs like cropping, sharpening, chaing exposure etc. adding Copyright (something that is my next job with PS.
5/ Ways to go from color to B&W images, and then add some color back
6/ To try and enhance certain colors in your picture with out effecting others
7/ Learning to add picture, copyright, info, and the picture data for others to view
8/ Learning about color profiles from camera to PP to printing
9/ Working with levels and Curves, Brightness and Contrast
10/ Last and not least setting up your monitor

Not in this order, but what I need to learn, or have asked about on these forums well asked for some, I need to learn out the others

Ok, so now that we have pretty much of a concesus of which skills are vital to learn in order to be a beginner PHotoshop user (say open a regular photo, and save it later in better shape than it was originally open).

Which of these are most important?
Can you prioritize ? Where would you start?...