"I want to be able to rely on myself for cranking out your standard web/app elements."
I had the same problem (learning Photoshop) with that exact reasoning a year ago. I learned Photoshop and got pretty decent with it in terms of what I could do, although I was far from able to design anything beautiful.
Then I learned there is a much better way for us developers: buying templates.
If what you want is to have a decent design for your site, but you can't afford or don't want to wait for a professional designer, buying templates is the best thing you can do. You can get a beautiful-looking template for as little as $10-$20 dollars, and they'll be much better than you could hope to accomplish with limited time.
Also, if you're looking to just throw up a website quickly, I'd look into getting it set up with WordPress + a commercial template. It will take you 3 hours to get a beautiful-looking website up on the net, and you can always copy the design (and the design's code) if you want to make a web-app with the same theme. This is what I use for all my sites - a quick WordPress site with a theme from WooThemes, and a web-app (sitting on a subdomain) with the same theme, copied from the original template.
Resources:
WooThemes - beautiful and very easy to use themes for WordPress (and a few other CMS', I believe). http://www.woothemes.com/
ThemeForest - also great themes, available for WordPress or as just plain html/css/js files you can play with. http://themeforest.net/
ThemeForest Admin Templates - I just learned about this one. ThemeForest templates, but that are specifically designed to serve as an "administration interface" for a webapp. In other words, if you're building a web application, these themes have everything you need. I haven't used one yet, but I'll definitely be buying a theme from here the next time I build a webapp. http://themeforest.net/category/site-templates/admin-templat...
Oh, by the way, if you're interested in learning Photoshop just for fun, I really recommend the Lynda videos - http://www.lynda.com/.
I've made the mistake of using those for some clients sites on a budget. Like 7 of them, so a good sample.
Can you believe on average the bugs in those themes actually made us waste more time than building our own?
WPMU Dev themes also have a low quality level (one didn't even validate...).
I don't know about woothemes or elegantthemes, they might have a good quality and support but there are too much of them around and looking exactly like a site I've already seen is a bad thing in my book.
Your best bet in my opinion is learning Fireworks, it easy to make vector wireframes, and is is meant for churning out web optimized assets. The 9 slicing is huge help when reusing buttons, modules etc. Plus, there are lots of great UI templates out there to get you started. I personally use illustrator, but would highly recommend Fireworks for you particular needs
Comments
Don't learn Photoshop.
"I want to be able to rely on myself for cranking out your standard web/app elements."
I had the same problem (learning Photoshop) with that exact reasoning a year ago. I learned Photoshop and got pretty decent with it in terms of what I could do, although I was far from able to design anything beautiful.
Then I learned there is a much better way for us developers: buying templates.
If what you want is to have a decent design for your site, but you can't afford or don't want to wait for a professional designer, buying templates is the best thing you can do. You can get a beautiful-looking template for as little as $10-$20 dollars, and they'll be much better than you could hope to accomplish with limited time.
Also, if you're looking to just throw up a website quickly, I'd look into getting it set up with WordPress + a commercial template. It will take you 3 hours to get a beautiful-looking website up on the net, and you can always copy the design (and the design's code) if you want to make a web-app with the same theme. This is what I use for all my sites - a quick WordPress site with a theme from WooThemes, and a web-app (sitting on a subdomain) with the same theme, copied from the original template.
Resources:
WooThemes - beautiful and very easy to use themes for WordPress (and a few other CMS', I believe). http://www.woothemes.com/
ThemeForest - also great themes, available for WordPress or as just plain html/css/js files you can play with. http://themeforest.net/
ThemeForest Admin Templates - I just learned about this one. ThemeForest templates, but that are specifically designed to serve as an "administration interface" for a webapp. In other words, if you're building a web application, these themes have everything you need. I haven't used one yet, but I'll definitely be buying a theme from here the next time I build a webapp. http://themeforest.net/category/site-templates/admin-templat...
Oh, by the way, if you're interested in learning Photoshop just for fun, I really recommend the Lynda videos - http://www.lynda.com/.
themeforest: no, no, no!!
I've made the mistake of using those for some clients sites on a budget. Like 7 of them, so a good sample.
Can you believe on average the bugs in those themes actually made us waste more time than building our own?
WPMU Dev themes also have a low quality level (one didn't even validate...).
I don't know about woothemes or elegantthemes, they might have a good quality and support but there are too much of them around and looking exactly like a site I've already seen is a bad thing in my book.
Your best bet in my opinion is learning Fireworks, it easy to make vector wireframes, and is is meant for churning out web optimized assets. The 9 slicing is huge help when reusing buttons, modules etc. Plus, there are lots of great UI templates out there to get you started. I personally use illustrator, but would highly recommend Fireworks for you particular needs