just got photoshop today. first pic.

i dont know :D but i tried... first pic ever.
Its for a quake 3 clan. rocket arena mod.

Really Simple but I like the simplicity :D Not bad for a first pic especially since my first pic was just a black square

Yeah, like TylerPestell said, very good for your first pic. Looks like you've been experimenting with selection and the filters and such. What did you use for the text? Is that a displacement map? You're off to a really good start! I look forward to seeing you learn and improve.

Extremely good for your first pix, That looks like neofrogs displacement map text tutorial to me, even same psd. Still Very good. My first pic was like a gradient and text :(

neofrogs tutorial. good guess ! :D.

what do u think i should do next. like, ideas on how to experiment and learn. picture ideas. i cant think of anything. thanks. btw i had some fun getting those models transparent. lol. i found out by playing around by 'extract' instead of using the lasso tool. much easier. thanks for your kind replies. im not educated enough to try a interface.

btw... im gonna start a web designs business once i get better. what do you think is better --> simplicity and speed, or complexity and eyecandy. thanks

Simplicity and speed is always first! Generally, no one cares about eyecandy but the person making it. I mean if you post it on a place like this, that's fine, because that is why we're here. If you are going to be running a business and doing sites for clients, then always simplicity and speed. They don't care about your eyecandy. They just want a site that runs fast and makes them money. If they ask for eyecandy be careful about how much you do. There are a lot of ways to make attractive web sites without having a ton of graphics everywhere. Also, it doesn't matter how beautiful and amazing your eyecandy is, if people have to wait 5 minutes for it to download, they will quickly lose interest and leave. Probably to never come back. Use effective color schemes and interesting layouts to make your sites visually appealing, not graphics. I mean still use graphics, just tastefully.

Well anyway, you get the idea. Don't be in a rush to go out and "start a web design business". Take your time and learn what you are doing first. Yeah, it's tempting to buy a copy of Photoshop, read some tutorials, slap together some HTML in FrontPage, and call yourself a web designer, but that's far from the right way. Learn HTML if you don't know it already. Buy some books on Photoshop. Buy some books on useability, color, and interface design.

I don't mean to give you a hard time about it, it's just that red flags go up when someone comes in here showing their first ever photoshop image, and in the same day says, "I want to start a web design company soon!". Everyone and their mother (literally) calls themselves web designers. And unfortunately it's almost that easy to say that, and start getting clients. Because a lot of people don't understand the internet, and so they can't tell if the person knows what they are doing or not. But that's starting to change, and the little weekend warrior web designers are starting to realize that they don't really know what they are doing, and all that free money just isn't going to come anymore, and they're going to have to go back to watching cartoons on saturday instead of charging someone $2,000 for a web site they made with the Geocities automated web site creation kit or whatever.

Ok, I need to stop now. Like I said before, it just bothers me that you are already considering starting a business in this industry, when you just learned how to use the blur filter in photoshop. I'm just venting I guess. I talk to people every single day that have had experiences with people who call themselves web designers, only to get burned in the end. And then I end up redesigning the whole thing anyway. There's a lot more to web site design than photoshop and dreamweaver. So do yourself and everyone else a favor and don't rush it.

lol, ive had a web design comany for 3 years, i know html and didn't have the money for photoshop, what i was expressing, is to learnphotoshop and merge it w/ my small company. :D lol i remember, 3 years ago trying to make a website. im not a novice to the web, just to photoshop. :D sorry again, but im not that newbie... ive been using pain shop pro for a couple years, and im excited to try out photoshop. I didn't know you would think that im new to programming. i know parts of php, most all html, and of course, i dont program, but use sites for javascript resources.

Thanks for your kind reply. Could you gimme an example of a simplicity site? thanks.

I can say im new to the community of photoshop. Thanks, again.

Sorry for the misunderstanding on my part, soN1c. You may know full well what I'm talking about then. What I said still applies to a lot of people though, even though not to you. I was just letting out a little frustration built up from the daily grind at 4:00 in the morning.

Well the first example that comes to mind of a simplistic site that is still very attractive and easy to use would be:

FlipFlopFlyin
(this link isn't working for me right now. Either his server is down, or my computer is just nutty. Let me know if anyone else can see it.)

It has very few graphics, and the graphics it does have are 1 or 2 colors, making them around 1k each. It's easy to see where you can go, and easy to get there when you want to. I think the site looked a little better when he had it green instead of the pink, but it's still a great example of a simplistic site that works well.

Nothing is worse than a wasted rant huh? Of course it could be the fact that I'm posting on this forum at 3:45 am :(

Eh, I don't think it was wasted. I'll just pretend I was talking to someone else! Besides, this is a forum, not a verbal conversation, so maybe someone that fits that description will come along 6 months from now and read it. Then it will not have gone to waste!