Ok, so here's the scoop.

For these classes I am having to use Adobe CS5. I am completely lost when it comes to using these programs to do much more than produce black and white images (as is plainly clear if you have viewed any of my recent deviations.) I am having so many problems - can't get the textures right when doing the distance thing, can't get the colors right. In photoshop - can not figure out how to rotate just a selection instead of the whole image! I'm telling you, this is making me crazy.

I admit, I absolutely love illustrator and the idea of being able to edit images numerous times as long as they are in the ai. file format. I seem to be getting the hang of illustrator, except I - for the life of me - cannot figure out how to use the gradient tool in there.

I have gone through various videos on YouTube to figure stuff out and they have helped a little bit but not too much. This is just really irritating because even the beginning classes don't give you a whole lot of information on the tools and how to use them and what they do.

Any information on websites for beginners, videos, etc will be very helpful and very much appreciated.

And yes I have looked for the Adobe CS5 for Dummies book and it is way expensive, not to mention that I will NOT have it before the class ends