The help documentation included in most graphic design software is always lacking. Most of the wisdom when it comes to graphic design comes from other people who actually use and design with a particular software. You can typically find graphic design articles over the Internet that has some nuggets of wisdom in terms of great techniques. However, finding the right graphic design articles for a specific purpose can really be hard work. You may find thousands, even millions of links when you search for a particular graphic design topic. It is going to be hard sorting through them all. If you want to organize your search for graphic design articles and Design Tutorials, you have to organize your search using three particular kinds of online material out there. The actual developer's website, design community forums and design blogs.
Look at the software developers website: Your first step should always be the developer's website. Most graphic design software have periodic updates that the developers release. This may come in the form of extra articles and information about particular new features and tutorials on how to use them. By going to the developer's website you can gain this additional new information that can help you design better and faster. This should be your starting of point before going searching for "unofficial" tutorials and articles.
Visit community forums: Now, typically there should also be a community forum in the developer's website itself. It is there where you can find more information about tips and techniques from a community of developers and users alike. The good thing about forums is that it contains mostly "wisdom" about topics instead of the raw knowledge that help documentation provides. People provide "human" information from forums. The topics usually in forums involve real and common problems and solutions that people deal with when using a certain kind of software. Also there can be some treads where they discuss a particular design technique, that people just discovered doing. These types of information can be invaluable to any designer seeking to widen his or her own techniques in graphic design.
Besides the actual developer's community forum, there are other public forums out there that specialize in Design Tutorials and design software as a topic. It is actually good to try and look into these "3rd party" forums about design. Besides gaining other kinds of tips and techniques from a different set of people and communities, you can also get the heads up on other useful graphic design software.
Search for Design Tutorials blogs: Lastly, you can try reading design blogs. Fortunately, it so happens that google has a new feature where you can search for blogs only. You can do this just by clicking on the "blogs" option on top of the google search page. This is a great tool if you want to search for graphic design articles with a personal touch. Blogs are a treasure trove of information and most bloggers actually post step by step graphic design articles with screenshots to teach people how they did a particular interesting technique. Of course be sure to thank that blogger if you can for sharing such valuable information.
Hopefully this little article helped you a bit in narrowing down your search, or at least focusing it to an effective one. With all the information out there on the web, you can get lost. You just need a few search strategies like this so that you can at least spot what you need faster and better. Good Luck!
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