Program like Aperture?

[Ellissentials]

Any tutorials anyone recommends?

[silentsounds]

Just YouTube it. You'll find tons

Sent from my ADR6350 using Tapatalk

[Claude Perdu]

Heard good things about Lynda if you're willing to pay.

If you know exactly what you want at the moment, just Google the specific thing and you'll find loads of good stuff.

PSD Tuts is a great site to follow, along with the rest of that network (I'm more into the web-side of things over there).

[Ellissentials]

I found a sea of tut's.. just not sure what is good and what is bad. For every good tut, there's about 10 that are a waste of time.

Figured I'd ask if there were any that you personally recommend. If not, no worries.

...sorry for the noobness all.

[Marc S]

what exactly are you trying to do?

[Ellissentials]

Thank you Claude. I've been to PSD tuts quite a few times. Always loads of good stuff there.

[Ellissentials]

what exactly are you trying to do?

The more I think about it, the more it makes me think I need to setup my camera better, get better lighting and just HAVE a better camera. Some pictures look like lighting, saturation and the "background" (what's not focused on) is edited, and pictures "come alive" ...... you do it often (I think what I want done can still be done even on a crappy picture)
Max Ellis (another guy from UK) has a lot of pictures like this.

I can't fully explain what I mean.. I could go link some pictures, but the more I look the more I think of what I said in my first sentience.

[Marc S]

best thing is to find a picture of what you WANT to achieve and we'll tell you what is down to the camera/photographer and what could be replicated in photoshop with a sub par image.

then post a picture of one you have taken and we'll tell you how to get closer to the 1st picture.

[silentsounds]

If you are referring to the blurry backgrounds, I would highly recommend you don't try and achieve that effect using photoshop or any editing. It can be done, but it usually looks artificial.

As is the case with most programs like these, it takes time to get the hang of it. Understand what the various tools achieve. A number of people learn a couple of effects and stick to it. They can't create effects of processes of their own. So I'd advise you to look up tutorials that explain the tools to better understand what you can do with the program.

I'll try and look up some youtubers that have decent tutorials.

[Ellissentials]

Thanks Marc and Silent.

@Silent: Anything you can recommend will be checked out, so thank you for taking the time.

@Marc: I'll go grab some pics and throw them in this thread.