Where Did YOU Learn To Post Process?

As the title suggests, where did YOU learn to post process?

Some might say a short-course. Some might say they worked as an assistant and picked up all their know-how there. Others may say the internet and internet tutorials. A few might come out with trial and error. I'm guessing many will say they're self-taught.

I'm constantly amazed at the work of many of the photographers on this forum. Mainly in the G&N and Wedding sections, where heavy skin processing has been applied, and the models look flawless. Work from Spoolin, M Powered, Freddycr and many others has me awed. Obviously it's a combination of knowing how to light a situation and use your equipment, but PP is such a big part of digital work nowadays I can't help but want to be a part of it.

So, please, enlighten me. Where did YOU learn to PP?

95% self taught.

Suprisingly - and most people don't know this - but Photoshop has a Help feature that is very good. That is were almost all of my knowlege comes from.

As to the other 5% - that comes from posting direct "How do you...?" questions here.

The most useful answer I ever got was from Belmodo, telling me how to apply a gradiant mask HERE.

Rad

read, practise, read and then more. I bought the CS books from Kelby and Evening and it helped alot.

Started using PS4.0 when I was assisting. Rest is self taught mostly.
And off course Podcasts help. Just as the www.

On my own... a few books but mostly how-to's on the Internet.

Anything beyond simple color balancing... etc... is often not very intuitive.

Something hard/impossible to teach is to know when to stop PP'ing an image.

Me. too. Most of what we think is important is already in the "Sticky"s, & with all the tutorials on the i-net, you probably don't need all the non-photographic info they teach in formal classes. Learn about using a Layer Mask for local changes. Post #9:
Try a Layer Mask for easy local changes. Post #9:
Airport runway shoot

See the Tutorial on layer Masking in post #9; (PS Elements in Post # 14)
A question about sky.

Internet, books and trying things for myself.

I too am self taught. My first digital camera was a 10D which came with a copy of Elements. I only shot JPG for the first couple of cards and then switched to RAW. This was a totally new element for me and the Canon software was not user friendly back then. My first RAW converter was Breezebrowser Pro (which I still use today though not for conversions, it has some other nice features that I like).

I quickly upgraded to a full version of Photoshop and downloaded as many online tutorials as I could find. There is so much information online for photoshop that it should not be hard to learn by doing this. I then joined NAPP which was a good decision on two fronts. They put on new tutorials every week and the negotiated discounts with other vendors means that I saved way more than the 100.00 annual membership fee.

I tend to travel alot and I download a number of photoshop podcasts on my iPod and watch them in airports or inflight. No matter how long one has been using photoshop or any associated programs there is always something new that you can learn. I watch these and then will attemp a replication on one of my own images.

If one wants to learn illustration/graphics in a big way then I would suggest that you take established courses. If you are a casual photographer and want to learn then I think the described process above is good, at least it worked well for me.

I know people that have used photoshop since version 1. There are things in this program that they have never used. When I first got it I thought to myself that I wanted to master it all. In retrospect there are only a select part of it that most people will use. I have never used the slice tool though I understand it and I doubt that I ever will.

Mostly self taught. Once I understood layers,layer masks, adjustment layers and blend modes the learning curve got alot better. Curves and Levels will be your friend, time well spent there too.

I work in the printing industry and at first I learned to manually re-touch film from a guy who had been an army photographer in WWII then the company I work for went digital and I was handed a copy of PS 3 and told to learn. Well over a decade later, I'm still learning.

I would also agree with Self Taught, at least 50 percent. I started with PSE 2.0..
When people say the learning curve is steep they aren't kidding. But, Thank Gawd and all the gurus at adobe for Raw processing. Life has become much easier!

I started with Photo Shop 7 and for the most part self taught. I've used resources such as online tutorials and some video lessons from lynda.com.

Did graphics work a number of years ago with Photoshop 5 then dropped out of using the app till a few years back and re-learned what I needed for photography. Mostly gleaned from the 'Net to reinforce previous skills. Surprisingly a lot of what I learned in design can be applied to photography.

I also learn from students when I teach PS.

I started with ps4 and I would say 50% of my total knowledge for PS came from salf taught and spending time behind it. I credit rest 50% from www and deke mcclelland's 1 to 1 is really helpful.

I still want to learn more on channel mixer, curves, levels ...

60% Self Taught
20% Scott Kelby Publications
20% Info via the www and NAPP (Photoshop User Mag is [IMO] awesome...)