How to take high quality pictures?

Okay so I have a nice nikon camera so it's not a matter of having a good camera or not. I need help with learning to take better pictures. I'm in a photo shop/computer class and I work a lot with pictures so I would like to be able to my own pictures but I just suck at it:/

How do professionals take such good pictures? And also how do I get a good background for pictures? Do I need to take them against white paper or a white wall? I know this sounds stupid but I'd love it if you could give me some tips on how to take good pictures!

Professionals incorporate the principles of art and design into their photographs. A nice photo will have odd numbered patterns in their subject, such as one person or three. The subject is not in the center of the photo on most occasions. Good lighting helps give the photo natural contrast but since you are in a photoshop class, you can change the contrast once you upload the picture on your Computer so this step isn't really necessary for you. Line can be used to draw the eye to the center of interest, such as a kite on a straight line string. This line would move the eye toward either the kite or the person holding it on the other end. Colors can be used in digital photography. When choosing a color scheme, you want to keep the cool colors and warm colors separated. Blues and reds shouldn't be in the same picture unless it creates a noticeable and interesting visual. Blues, greens, and purples are cool colors. Reds, oranges, and yellows are warm. Depth of field is was most photographers use to make their photos interesting. An example of shallow depth of field would be a dog in focus while the background is blurry. Deep depth of field would be used for landscape portraits, where the whole scene is in focus

Emmy above offers very good suggestions. However, if you try and compare your photos with others who have much more experience than you have, it will suck all the joy out of photography and you will NEVER be satisfied with your own work, even with the cheats you might get with Photoshop software.

So, just get out there with your camera and have fun with it. More than likely, you know more about photography than the average human.

To add to what Emmy said, a couple of things: practice! Remember there's one big advantage of digital cameras over film cameras: bits are cheap! Don't worry about taking bad pictures, keep working at it. Use the camera manual to help you learn what the best settings are for different situations. Learn how to use the manual settings on your camera, that can make a huge difference because it allows you to control what the camera does.

And ALWAYS use the largest file/highest quality settings on the camera. If you are learning how to use Photoshop and work on the computer, shoot in RAW or RAW+Jpeg if your camera lets you do that. Yes, the files will be huge, but RAW is all the data the camera "sees" with no compression. Memory cards are not very expensive any more, so you don't want to make the mistake of worrying how many pictures you can get on the card. Quality (highest resolution possible) is more important than quantity.

Hope that helps.