hi, ive been studying css/html and photoshop for about 6 months now and im still a newbie, but i have a few questions if anyone can help please.

i have made 10 mockup websites but they are all based on other sites.
i am working on these photoshop tutorials here. http://www.rnel.net/search/photoshop/logo-tutorials-1
but a lot of them are logos. i really have no idea how i would use photoshop to design a website and not just a logo or object. my main problem is, if a company gave me an assignment to do a site about "insurance" or "pizza" i would have no idea how to visually design the page in different and interesting ways using css layouts and photoshop. my plan was just to look at enough web page templates on the web to get a feel for different designs, but i still would have problems coming up with a look for the website, i.e what shapes to make, or what layout to choose, basically, the look for the whole site.
any help appreciated, because at this point, im just learning photoshop and css/html, without having an ability to create my own interesting designs, and specifically if it really were about "insurance" or "pizza". i probably would look at similar websites and base my design off that, but i dont want to be a copy artist. any help on this GREATLY appreciated, because that is the main thing that is holding me back now. thanks. derek

check out these templates. i would have no clue how to come up with those ideas they came up with. the variety is amazing.

http://templates.rnel.net

Well basically I really think that what you want to implement is what every designers should possess...creativity. If you don't have this, I am sure you will have a hard time dealing with different sorts of design and templates out there. I guess it will be better if you learn how to use these tools first. Just like photoshop, and any other html editor software out there like Dreamweaver.

BTW, what's up with the url? Smells like a link drop to me.

the link was to show you examples of what im talking about

here is a book i found , its called "principles of beautiful web design" i hope it helps me. so far its pretty good.

http://www.sitepoint.com/books/design1/

A book that had helped me is a book from the "Head First" book line, called Web Design.

Okay. Thanks for clearing it up silverglade.

instead of reading books, i would suggest you to watch video lectures. That will help you a lot. I my self learned from the video tutorials.