I boast self-taught when it comes to Photoshop and Illustrator. And I do pretty well for someone who relies heavily on these apps at work. What can I say, I like to make things pretty. But I’m not officially a Graphic Designer, I’m just lucky.
This is old, via Gizmodo, but it’s just an amazing use of Illustrator. It’s crazy how much time went into making this illustration, and how fast the average person would skim over it. It’s pretty much a thankless job — believe me, I know. A lot of fellow office peeps think it’s “magic”, much in the same way that I’m “good at computers”, according to them. I’m really just tech-savvy, is all.
This one comes via i09, and it’s an equally neat use of Photoshop. I’ve had to fix up my fair share of photos, but cobbling together separate ones to create a totally new image is hard work!
I only hope that, one day, I can be as good as these creators. I’m fortunate enough to have work cover these programs for me. If you’re looking for a free equivalent, I suggest GIMP as a replacement for Photoshop — it takes some getting used to, and Inkscape for vector-based creations. The latter is pretty, pretty, pretty good, as Larry David would put it. I personally recommend it.