Photoartistry Resources - my Top Picks

"The Boofheads (kererū)"

​Aside from a good dose of curiousity and willingness to explore and try things out, I can recommend the following courses, software, and hardware to anyone keen on getting into photo-artistry.

ONLINE COURSES
​Anything and everything by Adobe Evangelist Julienne Kost (check whether your local library provides free access to her Lynda courses - Wellington Library does.)
http://www.jkost.com/photoshop.html
https://www.lynda.com/Julieanne-Kost/1059150-1.html 

Photoshop Artistry: Fine-art Grunge Composition with Sebastian Michaels
Teaching the fundamentals of photo-artistry with Photoshop and PS Elements
https://prophotoshopartistry.com/specialoffer

AWAKE - Living the (Photo)-Artistic Life with Sebastian Michaels
A year-long training program for photo artists - life-changing!
Enrollments open twice a year for students of his Fine-art Grunge Composition class. 
https://prophotoshopartistry.com/awake2018

Fine Art Photography with Brooke Shaden
Everything you need to know about creating fine art photos from the shoot, compositing, making prints, to running a fine-art business.
https://www.creativelive.com/class/fine-art-photography-the-complete-guide-brooke-shaden

SOFTWARE & HARDWARE
My essentials:

• Photoshop CC (although you can get a long way with PS Elements). Another free alternative that I haven't used is Gimp.
• Lightroom Classic (or Bridge), for organizing your assets. I don't recommend Lightroom CC unless you have an excellent internet connection with no data-cap and the funds to pay for GBs of online storage. Photoshop files are huge and you will also start acquiring thousands of image assets. Better to save locally and use a backup service instead.
• Wacom Intuos Pro drawing tablet.
• Calibrated monitor, especially if you're making prints.
• A grunty computer with a ton of disk and ram, especially if you want to make big images (though many people happily create on their iPad or smart phone).
• A camera - even your cellphone camera is good enough to get started with. I still occasionally use images taken on my very first digital camera - a 4 MP Nikon Coolpix 4500. Though I'm now glad to be shooting with full-frame mirrorless cameras.

Wouldn’t be without, but not essential:

• Topaz Labs Suite (especially ReMask, ReStyle, and Impression).
• On1 Perfect Resize for generating high-quality enlargements.
• DxO PhotoLab for industrial strength denoising.

Ask in the comments below if you have any questions about any of the above...