You should start with one. Which one? — depends on what sort of visual style you want to go with first. I started w/ Photoshop first b/c I liked working with photos. If you like working with vector art and design, then start with Illustrator. Each one will help you achieve a unique looks. Its like painting with different brushes.

Photoshop has vector based tools built into it, but it can never do the types of work that Illustrator. Similarly, Illustrator could never do the pixel based manipulation that Photoshop does. Photoshop is great for what it was made for. Photo editing. Photographers use photoshop as their program of choice. I started this way. For fun I would take family photos and take people’s heads and place them from one to the other.

Illustrator is used mainly by graphic artists on a wider scale. You can make vector designed with much less CPU usage and have scaled to immense sizes without distortion since its based on measurements. — The following images were made in Illustrator. I chose Illustrator b/c of its ability to scale without distortion:

http://photos-h.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v36/145/19/26101406/n26101406_30572391_6793.jpg
http://photos-d.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v36/145/19/26101406/n26101406_30572435_3142.jpg
http://photos-e.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v36/145/19/26101406/n26101406_30572436_3457.jpg

Some artists choose to make Illustrator the program of their choice. Others make Photoshop their choice. If you ask me, both have their strengths and weakness, thus I use both of them to get the visual results I’m looking for. There’s a reason why Adobe has both of these programs in their bundle

For example; I doubt that Id ever be able to achieve the results I did for my business card and header design with the use of just one of the programs.

There’s a discussion in Illustrator vs. Photoshop here:
http://www.graphic-design.com/Photoshop/best.html

Oh and some tutorials to get you started:
http://www.creativecloseup.com/monster-size-selection-of-awesome-photoshop-tutorials

It may provide some insight.

I did the design using a combo of illustrator and photoshop. The final was saved via photoshop. If you want instruction of design work, it doesn’t matter whether you do it via Lynda, Total Training (my favorite), free online tutorials, or taking a class at university. — – Your skills will show through practice and practice only.

I’ve been playing with photoshop since 1998 thus this comes easy to me. For someone beginning to explore their potential, set yourself up for assignments that force you to put what you know into practice. Offer to do the posters for your local masjid events or MSA events. This will force you to throw out designs every month at least.

Make it a habit to look at professional designs in magazines. Try to build off of work they already have put forth. This way you can slowly build your “toolbox” of skills.

This is what my website looked like way back in the day:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070323044215/http://www.leechonfilms.com/

I’ll eventually get some cards that match my site too (of course, I first need to build my film biz site.