i feel like adding my two pence
I agree with claf if you dont spend time learning then you cant make anything half decent
(If ya ever played a stratergy game involving upgrading weapons its kinda like that but instead of a bigger gun its a massive arsenal of editing techniques at your disposal)
Apprenticeship is an excellant way to get experiance fast. especially over msn. you can quickly negotiate through functions and commands and application of tools, masks, vector mask and filters etc
If you dont know how to apply for a college talk to people on forms ask questions lots of questions. you will find most of your questions have already ben asked by other ps users but if they havnt post em up...
The bonus of college is you will never stumble across new things they will be thrown at you. but college or uni cant answer all the q's as in stuff you never thought about in ps like simple 3d object effects and application of renders and how the layer styles can work with an image construct as a whole cannot be taught easily it s more experimentation.
but
teachers can tell you what somthing is for.. like cmyk is for print and rgb is for web..
and intreguing stuff like rgb's black is not as black as cmyk black.
Rgb at 0% colour is somthing like 90% black.
Just when you think yu knw everything in ps you may find a buttton you never clicked before and everything you knew now has to be applied to that. the best example is a class mate of mine who never understood how to use history snaps to save on messing up and use for comparasons now he uses em all the time.