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what was your experience like when you started learning Adobe Photoshop?

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
January 1, 2025
5 replies
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Hello everyone, I am doing some research and was wondering if there is anyone willing to answer some questions. The questions are:

What motivated you to start learning Photoshop, and how did that motivation influence your learning journey?
What challenges did you face when you first opened Photoshop, and how did you overcome them?
Which specific features or tools in Photoshop were most challenging for you to understand, and what strategies did you use to grasp them?
What resources or support systems did you find most helpful during your learning process, and why?
What advice would you give to someone who is just starting to learn Photoshop to help them navigate the initial learning curve more effectively?

NB, colourmanagement

Community Expert

@Terrance5DD1

I am doing some research and was wondering if there is anyone willing to answer some questions. The questions are:

are you in education? A teacher?

1 What motivated you to start learning Photoshop, and how did that motivation influence your learning journey?

As a pro advertising photographer, when transparency portfolios went out of fashion, I wanted to be able to print my work as inkjet prints in my own office. doesn’t sound too hard does it! I even bought a drum scanner in the end.

3 What challenges did you face when you first opened Photoshop, and how did you overcome them?

I had no idea, I managed to open an image file, but knew nothing about how to work on it. This was 1998, I was new to imaging on a mac.

And the colour of image files (scanned from my trans. by pro bureaus) was all over the place (no embedded profiles), I eventually discovered that my display system was inaccurate, despite following advice to buy an "Apple Colorsync" display ( I think that was the name). Colorsync was claimed to make it all match - yeah, right! Colorblind Prove-it to the rescue.

I'm still helping folk solve those issues.

4 Which specific features or tools in Photoshop were most challenging for you to understand, and what strategies did you use to grasp them?

Colour spaces, embedded profiles in images, display calibration, how to make a decent print - this lead me to seek out someone to learn from and I picked up colour management from then. In a world where very few had significant knowledge of colour management, I eventually grew my own knowledge into a consulting role.

5 What resources or support systems did you find most helpful during your learning process, and why?

Mentorism and one-to-one training from expert users. Just a very few. Most importantly Thomas Holm in Denmark and Joseph Holmes in the US. Plus the guys at basICColor in Germany have taught me tons. Steve Upton at Chromix too.

6 What advice would you give to someone who is just starting to learn Photoshop to help them navigate the initial learning curve more effectively?

Play with it, have fun with your own images (work on copies not originals) using a decent manual like "Photoshop Artistry", find a few problem images of your own, stuff you'd like to fix. Take them to someone good for one-to-one training on your own images with your own issues to solve. That’s what I did.

I found the books "Photoshop 5 for Photographers", "Real World Photoshop" & eventually, when released: "Real World Color Management". "Photoshop Artistry" was the best, though, because you got images on a CD and instructions on how to work on them. Proper step by step hands on training.

I don't get learning from videos, they are great for a walk through demo, sure but nothing beasts having book to refer to. I'm old fashioned like that

neil barstow - adobe forum volunteer,

colourmanagement consultant & co-author of 'getting colour right'

See my free articles on colour management

Help others by clicking "Correct Answer" if the question is answered.

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T

Terrance5DD1Author

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Thank you so much. I appreciate you sharing your experience and for your precious time

NB, colourmanagement

Community Expert

@Terrance5DD1 I'm wondering why you'd like to know, are you in education? A teacher perhaps?

neil barstow - adobe forum volunteer,

colourmanagement consultant & co-author of 'getting colour right'

See my free articles on colour management

Help others by clicking "Correct Answer" if the question is answered.

Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts

Per Berntsen

Community Expert

What advice would you give to someone who is just starting to learn Photoshop to help them navigate the initial learning curve more effectively?

By @Terrance5DD1

Having a thorough understanding of how digital images work will make it easier to learn, and to use Photoshop.

We get quite a few posts on this forum (as well as the Lightroom forums and the Camera Raw forum) where posters think there is a problem with the application (or a bug), and it turns out that the real problem is that they don't understand how digital images work.

It also helps to have knowledge about the various file formats, how they work, and when to use them.

I've written a couple of articles that you may find useful.

What is a digital image?

File formats

T

Terrance5DD1Author

Participating Frequently

Thank you

creative explorer

Community Expert

@Terrance5DD1 (my answers are in colour)

What motivated you to start learning Photoshop, and how did that motivation influence your learning journey?
It was part of the design program. Oddly enough, I wanted to do the technical aspects of the pre-press not being the designer, but when technology got better over the years, I came to love graphic design. With the help of pre-press, it helped to become a better designer and not to do and what to do. Photoshop was one of those tools where many clients would supply RGB images to us and if they were planning to print to a commercial printer (we would create film for them), we needed to make sure the images were CMYK. One client wanted a certain percentage of ink in the photos (they only want 220% of ink in all the images)...
What challenges did you face when you first opened Photoshop, and how did you overcome them?
For me, I came from a PC environment, and all the computers were all Macs. So I had to get the Control vs Command Key correct or Alt vs Option Key
Which specific features or tools in Photoshop were most challenging for you to understand, and what strategies did you use to grasp them?
In school, we had learned how to use Curves and Levels, but it was such a blur (think 1 hour to learn it!). When I got into pre-press, we were using Curves for color correction.

These days, if I had raw images, I would use Curves for color adjustments.
If I was doing a quick color correct, I may use Layers with the Alt key for the shadows and highlights.

And then, I was talking to a group of photographers the other day, and they were showing me why they prefer Lightroom over Photoshop and then I showed them why I loved Photoshop over Lightroom.... there are so many different ways to color correct an image
What resources or support systems did you find most helpful during your learning process, and why?
There was a magazine called Photoshop User. I was quite fortunate that we had a team of pre-press, and designers who knew Photoshop well, and they also helped my skillsets too. Another magazine was How-Design. Honestly, I know I learned Photoshop in school, but, it was real-work experience that really got me going. One of my first contracts out of school was a Sony Canada poster that our team was asked to do. The Creative Director ask 4 of us to come with ideas. It was presented, and I beat out the senior designer with my design. The senior designer wasn't too happy. Before I knew it, I was designing an ad for Honda... and it was these magazines that made the difference I think!
What advice would you give to someone who is just starting to learn Photoshop to help them navigate the initial learning curve more effectively?
There are so many great online tools, from Adobe themselves, in the programs (in the dashboard), YouTube (many different creators), and in print.

m

T

Terrance5DD1Author

Participating Frequently

Thank you

Conrad_C

Community Expert

Thanks, Bojan. Actually, this sounded familiar so I looked at the posting history, and it turns out I already answered similar questions in the earlier thread that Terrance5DD1 started. I learned many years ago when Photoshop was different and simpler, so I might step aside here and let newer users comment on what it’s like to learn how Photoshop is today.

Or, if it doesn’t matter how long someone has been using Photoshop, maybe that’s OK. Maybe @Terrance5DD1 would like to let us know a little more about the goal of the research to help clarify what would be helpful? Is it academic research, marketing research, building an AI database from the answers, personal curiosity, an article you’re writing, something else…?