I hate Photoshop Tutorials.

That’s right. The majority of tutorials teach you nothing that you couldn’t learn on your own. Most tuts exist to “teach” amateur “graphics designers” how to make “AWESOME LIGHTNING EFFECTS!” Let’s actually take a look at this tutorial that I saw on WikiHow and its end result:

Before you waste your time starting a tutorial on “How to make _____”, take a look at the END PRODUCT before wasting your time following the 6 steps of idiocy to produce a garbage looking lightning effect. What lightning looks like that? I wasn’t aware that lightning was hairy.

Photomanipulation tutorials can be even worse. Especially when they have titles like “How to make Dark style art”. If you need a “How to..” on how to make a style of art, give up right there. People who write tutorials like that only do so because a) They suck at art and think that they’re good enough to be teaching you and b) They want you to make crappy looking art. Here’s an example of a tutorial you should never follow.

I’m sorry, but that looks like something I made when I was 14. The saturation is out of control, the lost/lonely/emo angel-girl has no directional lighting on her face whatsoever. The whole thing looks like a bad CD cover for a failing gothic metal band (you know, bands with names like “Charlemagne” or “Black Unicorn”..stuff like that). It’s fine if you want to make something that you think looks pretty, but for God’s sake DO NOT UPLOAD IT AND WRITE A TUTORIAL ON IT.

Another thing that annoys me are tutorials about how to make sunsets with crappy fake grass in the foreground. Example:

The tutorial for this image is meant to be made into a web site, so I have serious sympathy to any of the misguided people who used it thinking that it looked good. Let me explain this in a delicate way that hopefully makes sense: making little “grassy plain with a sky in the background” images just look bleh. I’ve seen several examples of this theme used in signatures and art and it hardly ever looks any good. This is because the grass just looks flat and crappy and the sky is always made using some horrid filter (Render Clouds).

I’m not saying that you should never use tutorials. I’m asking you to not use tutorials that teach you how to make ugly things. If you follow these types of tutorials, you’ll be bound to make amateurish stuff that no one, but amateurs, will think looks nice.