I had the same problem at Arcana yesterday, hm. As I recall Syyd's tutorial had the same info I posted about alpha planes. It was specifically geared towards simple Poser portraits, a great way to practice techniques. She also suggested making small selections (using the lasso tool) and applying gaussian blur (at about 1.0, I think,) before adding the background. I agree but I'd be careful about that, her tute is rather liberal with the blur. As to other beginner tutes, not sure, but I assume they're out there. There's a postwork forum at RuntimeDNA. It doesn't seem to get much traffic, but if you ask questions, people will definitely respond. That might be another good place to request links to newbie tutes. Otherwise, specific questions to this and the Photoshop forums should yield some help. There's a fantastic Photoshop newsgroup on Usenet, too...can't remember the name, but a search will bring it up. Very helpful information there. Sorry if this is obvious, but your best starting place is to learn what all the tools do, and to not try to bite off more than you can chew at once. The mighty Photoshop has a significant learning curve.