This is a general design book, but one that is packed full of information and examples that you might find helpful. It's not a how-to book, but if you feel like you can recognize "good/great" design, but can't really produce it yourself: this is your book. You won't look at anything visually creative the same way again.
Otherwise, consider: "when all you have is hammer, you treat everything like a nail". People, myself included, tend to stick with what they know and are comfortable with. It's no surprise that all your designs end up looking similar: you're probably using the same tools in Photoshop and the same techniques. No tutorial is going to directly help you create "elegant graphics" in any meaningful way, but there are certainly great tutorials out there that will expose you to new techniques and skills which will broaden your personal toolbox.
Having a broader toolbox or skill-set makes new things possible that previously you might have not considered.
Some of my other favorite resource: http://www.smashingmagazine.com -- great showcases http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/ -- inspiration and tutorials http://twitter.com/#!/TheSash/designers -- a list of awesome designers on twitter
Here is the link to the school: http://www.drumbeat.org/p2pu-webcraft
and to courses: http://p2pu.org/webcraft -- good luck!
you can practice with vandelaydesign photoshop tutorials list. http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/photoshop-tutorials/ choose the one easy for you to begin with.
and once you master these basic skills, you can then search for "design inspiration" around the web to see how other designers are making web beautiful. when you understand the design principles, design tool becomes just a matter of choice. all the best.
Someone on this thread recommended a book called Design Elements, and it's great and just what I needed actually.
Once you read that, then I would suggest to start reading some well known web magazines, maybe like Smashing or VecTuts/PSDTuts to go through some tutorials and help you understand just how people use noise on a button, or a drop shadow on a button, etc. Then again, I think these things are sometimes over the top and used because it's trendy. But, you can make your own decisions.
A lot of people just use Photoshop patterns made by someone else for those background images (http://patterns.ava7.com/tag-beige.php,http://designm.ag/res...). Find a pattern, fill > pattern, tada!
One that helped me with logos is: Logo Design Love
I also liked the Classical Effects in Photoshop. Foe websites: I liked CSS Mastery and on the cssgarden as well as reading alistpart.
I also like to take existing websites and redo them to make them better just for my own pleasure. And if I really am pleased, I send them to the company in case they can use it.
