Photoshop - Self Learning

Phil1974

Phil1974

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Just subscribed to CC to get LR6 and force myself to learn PS. A question for experienced PS users - is there a sensible order to try and learn in? What are the basics (presume layers and masks?) and what should I leave until later in the learning curve? I am going to delve into the murky world of YouTube vids to get some tutorials and have a dusty copy of CS4 for dummies that I'll dig out too.
Ideally I would like to be competent in as many aspects of the software as possible. Any advice appreciated [emoji106]
 
Layers, masks, adjustment layers are the basics for photography retouching I think.
Scott Kelby's PS for digital photographers books are very good, I had a look at a friends and its in a sensible order. Worth investing in for £20 ish.
Phlearn is a very good YouTube channel. I've learnt a huge amount from Aaron on there.
If you intend on getting the most out of PS I'd recommend a graphics tablet, just the cheapest Wacom you can find - £50 ish. Makes a huge difference.
Just my 2p worth.
 
Selection methods
Layers,
Masks
retouching tools

Get them down first. Once you know what you're doing with those, then where you go next is down to how you work I suppose.
 
Cheers gents. Tom - I have watched a few Phlearn videos and really like them so will spend a bit of time there. Off topic but what came first, the TP logo or the Phlearn one :naughty: ?
I have a few Kelby books as well so will look at his latest CC one. Wacom tablet already purchased and yes it makes a big difference.
Just got to grips with layers as the whole notion doesn't seem to obvious to me yet.Hopefully there will be a lightbulb moment where I realise it makes sense!
 
Cataloguing is vital. A few years down the line you'll want to be able to find pictures easily, so get into the habit of naming and keywording you pics from the start. If you decide to do it later...you won't!

Get into the habit of always working on a duplicate layer. Then if anything goes wrong, you still have the original.

Download, name, cropping, levels, sharpening, saving, are the first steps I suggest in the beginners course I teach.
 
Thanks Jon. I use Lightroom for all of my work so most of that is already covered, although key wording is something I have been too lazy to do [emoji15]

I have a bit of free time at the moment and have been promising myself to learn PS for years. Now seems to be a good time. I'm sure layers will become less of a mystery as its my fear or lack of understanding of these that's put me off for so long. As they're such an integral part of PS I'd better get my head round them [emoji1]
 
Layers are brilliant. One of the most powerful and useful tools in PS. The RAW interface (which you can use on jpegs as well) is the same as LR 'develop', more or less, so that will be familiar. The Kelby books are good, though I haven't seen the CC edition. Start with the basics, get into a work flow that you're comfortable with, then add new skills and techniques one at a time.
 
Another fan of the Phlearn videos here, but there are absolutely loads of different channels on youtube covering PS tutorials. Some of the others I like (which have covered different effects I was trying to create at the time), were Blue Lightning TV, Beyz Hitzugaya, Serge Ramelli (very light use of his ;)), Photoshop Tutorials, and Adobe Photoshop.
 
I taught myself a few years ago and I used this Website, it's more about individual tools and not exactly photography based, or it wasn't when I used it anyway
 
Step one : Understand what you want to achieve.

If you don't know where you're going, the whole thing will feel overwhelming. If you'd be interested, and I can figure out a reasonable means to screencast, I'd be happy to run through well, pretty much anything.
 
Denyerec said:
Step one : Understand what you want to achieve.

If you don't know where you're going, the whole thing will feel overwhelming. If you'd be interested, and I can figure out a reasonable means to screencast, I'd be happy to run through well, pretty much anything.
Click to expand...

That's a great offer, thanks [emoji106]
I'm quite enjoying playing with some of the tutorials on Phlearn and BlueLightning at the moment. Anything that gets me using the basics over and over is good. Do you use PS professionally?
 
Self learning is the best thing and not to worry as lots of resources are available to help you out always!
 
I love PS there is just so much you can do with it, though Im still using the cs6 version, want to get my money's worth out of it before looking at the cloud edition.

As for learning, youtube is my saviour plus google for looking for specific tutorials on "how to do...." things
 
Can i just ask what the wacom tablet does? I'm away to google it but just wondered.
 
Pookeyhead said:
Selection methods
Layers,
Masks
retouching tools

Get them down first. Once you know what you're doing with those, then where you go next is down to how you work I suppose.
Click to expand...

As David said - in that order

If you do not know how to "select" something you will never get started and it will be very frustrating ….. if you do not "save your process" in another Layer ……. remember not to loose the (good) work that you have done

Practice selection - it is not easy

Duplicate the original image in a new layer - also be sure which Layer you are working on and keep an eye on the history palette

Also LR is "better" and easier for some stuff and PS can do stuff that LR cannot
 
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Sounds like a plan I have just downloaded the update in same boat
 
scottduffy said:
Can i just ask what the wacom tablet does? I'm away to google it but just wondered.
Click to expand...

A Wacom is a pressure sensitive pen input, so it allows you to "draw" rather than work with the mouse. The pressure sensitivity can be used to control various attributes of the brush (In Photoshop, the pressure sensitivity in LR is more limited) - so you can set it such that a light touch will have low opacity and heavier pressure increases the opacity, etc.

They're incredibly good to work with, the hardware (At least the Intuos 1 and 5, which are the two units I have experience with) is always top notch. I couldn't live without mine.
 
Sorry to hijack this thread Denyer, can you point me in a direction to understand curves, I use levels at the moment, but I would like to understand curves. Many thanks
 
Well, I suppose it's about self learning, if it's a problem I'm sure someone will move it to its own thread :)

Levels and Curves are kinda interrelated, but curves is the more powerful cousin. In the curves dialog, if you just move the end points, it's not a million miles away from moving the sliders in the levels dialog - you're basically setting the black and white points in the image. If you then pop a control point in the dead centre of the curves dialog (at 50,50) and move it up and down, that's somewhat analogous to moving the greypoint slider in the levels dialog too.

The main difference then comes from how you can control the linearity (Or lack thereof) of the change. The levels dialog is a fixed transformation, with "Black point, mid point, white point" in it. On a curve you can define any shape you like, meaning you can for example increase contrast in a particular region whilst holding everything else stable, etc. You can also affect different colour channels independently which can be useful for correcting colour casts.

Thinking about it, it's a bit tricky to explain everything without lots more words and some pictures. If you'd be interested in a screencast on the matter I'm pretty sure my connection will support a Skype screenshare if you'd be interested. Would probably only take 10 minutes to smash through the basics.
 
Thank you very much I would like that, I do have Skype, I will pm you when I have 10 mins and also when I figure out how to do the scree share. Many thanks for your help
 
Jango said:
Thank you very much I would like that, I do have Skype, I will pm you when I have 10 mins and also when I figure out how to do the scree share. Many thanks for your help
Click to expand...

There's not much to figure out, I'll be sharing my screen so we just need to sort out a time for the call.
 
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