Just as note: a lot of these tutorial sites advocate methods that make what you're trying to accomplish harder than it has to be or leaves your work (or just la

Just as note: a lot of these tutorial sites advocate methods that make what you're trying to accomplish harder than it has to be or leaves your work (or just layers of it) in states where it is hard to manipulate thereafter. This can leave people with a bad taste in their mouth, and while in many cases Adobe deserves the snark (especially when it comes to documentation and organization of the tools), a lot of the complaints are simply just people not knowing the capabilities of the software. Before going to generic tutorial sites, try to find some prolific digital artists or designers whose work you are trying to mimic. See if they have blog, Dribbble (I keep a small bucket of nice freebies I come across there here - http://dribbble.com/mandynicole/buckets/50265-Workflow-Resources http://dribbble.com/mandynicole/buckets/50265-Workflow-Resou...) or deviantArt posts on their process, particularly with source files to boot. Adobe's forums can be really helpful too, and there's a lot of great advice on design message boards for professionals that know the software in and out and know the most effective way of accomplishing a certain look. Also, with this audience especially, don't be afraid of using (or writing!) scripts to accomplish more abstract or tedious tasks. Both Photoshop and Illustrator accept JavaScript, VBScript and AppleScript. You can see some of the fun stuff people have done for Illustrator through Scriptographer here - http://scriptographer.org/gallery/ http://scriptographer.org/gallery/ (and also tutorials on how to make your own). Have fun!