Lately I’ve been sprucing up my collection of software applications, and spending time with some good online tutorials on my favorites. Many of these tutorials are free, and in this post, I’ll round up several that I’ve found worth paying attention to.

Are you a Photoshop user? Good-Tutorials has a great collection of tutorials on effects, filters and more. They’re all free, and easy to follow.
Also on the graphics front, Good-Tutorials has a useful collection of Adobe Illustrator tutorials. You can learn how to do convincing wood and metal effects, and more. If you happen to reach for the open source application GIMP when it comes to graphics, check the tutorials at HowToGimp.
If you dabble in Linux at all, there are a couple of sites on the web with outstanding tutorials specific to almost every Linux distribution, from Ubuntu to Fedora. HowtoForge is a good place to start. Look down the left rail of the site for the many topics covered. Also check out Unix-Tutorials.com.
Recently the OpenOffice suite of productivity applications was upgraded to a new beta version. As I’ve been trying it out, I’ve also been spending time at LearnOpenOffice.org, which offers free HTML- and Flash-based tutorials.
My very favorite site of all for free tutorials remains W3Schools. You can become proficient in almost any kind of web development at this site, tuning up your HTML, CSS and JavaScript skills, among other topics offered. Give this one a try.
Do you have any favorite sites for application tutorials?
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