Serious COMPLAINT about support centre!

[Richard_Batt]

I am a lecturer in photography for the University of the Third Age and am including in my courses a section on photo editing.  Based on feeback from my previous courses most student do not want to go to full Photoshop cloud subscription intially but would rather start with Photoshop Elements.  I want two simple things from Adobe.  One, a PDF of a simple introduction to Photoshop and Elements, giving on outline of how to do some simple things.  I do NOT want on line sites or videos.  I want to give the participants a PDF.  Secondly when I demonstrate I need to know what the full Photoshop will do that Elements won't do - I don't want to demnstrate something using Photoshop that Elements won't do.  I do have an old version of Elements I used before I upgraded to my Cloud subscription, but am sure there will be significiant imp;rovements to Elements since V10.  I have made these requests repeatedly to the on line support centre and just got a run around.  And even when I asked for the email address of the comp[laints centre, they refused to give it to me.  That';s why I'm using this forum to lodge my total absolute disillusionment with the support I was given ... none, appalling, dreadful.  I was told Adobe specialists would read this COMPLAINT here and help me.

[Test Screen Name]

You are complaining about the support because they aren't making teaching materials for you?  Isn't that the teacher's job? 

[Test Screen Name]

And, I think you're also wanting them to give you some free software to teach with? Good luck with that. And good luck with complaining if it doesn't happen.

[edwinb97216184]

This posting really is special. 

Do i understand that you want to complain to adobe that they won't give you the teaching materials to you so you can give your classes? And even then they point to existing free material, but since that is not to your liking it is not ok? 

Is that about right ?

I am not an adobe fan (anymore), but this is really weird. You want to teach about a product, so how about you make your own lesson material ? And also, if you want to teach things about the most recent version, how do you want to do that with an older version. 

most of the basic things will stay the same, but there are changes. But this is also the responsibility of the person teaching to have his materials up to date. 

Lastly, since this is a user forum, i definately thing that posting your complaint here will have 0% effect on getting a response (let alone a response that will satisfy you) from adobe itself. 

[hatstead]

Please review this user guide from Adobe. You may find it useful for the lesson plans.

Photoshop Elements User Guide (adobe.com)

[Greg_S.]

This is a user to user forum.  Who told you that Adobe specialists would read this COMPLAINT here and help me?

While you may think that your complaint is SERIOUS, placing it in all caps does not make it so, as you may surmise by the reactions you have received. 

But since we try to be helpful on this forum, you can lodge your complaint/bug report/feature request using a form found here. 

And you can download a 30 day free trial of Elements 2021 so that you can see whether any of the advanced features of CC that you are teaching are available in Elements. 

And feel free to make a PDF of my following screenshot.  It should provide most students of the University of the Third Age an easy map of where they can go to learn all of the skills that I suspect you are teaching.

[Richard_Batt]

Let me be 100% clear about this ... I went to the Adobe help online chat.  I was told by the support rep I connectedwith to lodge my complaint here - that person was a so called supervisor.  Their name is  NIKHIL H.  I was told "post your complaint on the Forum and one of our experts will see it and respond".  It seems to me NIKHIL H did that deliberately so my post would get the abuse it has generated.  He also said the Adobe experts would see my request and respond.  He seems to know this forum better than I do and set me up!

On the other hand, in frustration, I contacted the PHONE help line and get excellent help from one of the operators there.  Unfortunately he did not give his name so I can't name and praise him.

For those who are not aware of the educational sector you shuold know it is normal practice for publishers of material (books and software) to provide complimentary (free) copies to bona fide educators. This is the practice of such renowned publishers as Oxford University Press and Mcgraw Hill. They also provide educators with summary material for post lecture distribution to students. 

They have an altruistic and a commercial reason to do this. 

The altruistic reason is to provide educators with access to a wider scope of material for consideration in courses they are developing and teaching.  Commercially they hope educators wil l mention their material to students and recommend they read it, or even make the material the course reader.  In both instances it is a valid marketing strategy to generate morte sales for the publisher.  In any general education course an educator simply cannont cover all the detail in the limited time available - so post course reading to expand knowledge base by students is essential. 

On the photo courses I am teaching they are very general and given the total time given to me by the organisation photo editing will only get about 45 minutes.  So in that time I can hardly cover even the basic.  Which means if the students are stimulated to find out more they will have to read more in their own time.  Ideally the publisher of the material knows their material better than anyone so they are the best source of follow up reading for the students.

[Peru Bob]

If you are teaching Photoshop Elements, you owe it to your students to purchase the latest version.  Get the Student and Teacher version with a discount or see if your institution will provide it for you.

And as others have said, it is the job of the instructor to create customized instruction media for the course being offered.

[Phil Pickering]

Hi Richard,

Adobe have produced a wide-range of excellent education curricula which you can access via the Adobe Education Exchange. As the name implies, the Adobe Education Exchange is also a platform that allows educators to share any teaching resources that they have created with other educators.

Unfortunately, Adobe Photoshop Elements is not very well represented on the Education Exchange, with the vast majority of material focusing on the Creative Cloud applications. This is hardly surprising as most traditional educational institutions pay for a site-wide Creative Cloud license, which does not include Photoshop Elements. Furthermore, the overriding goal for the Adobe Education Exchange is to support educators who are looking to help their students start their digital design careers. As such, educators and students alike want to work with the main industry-standard applications, such as Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. Rightly or wrongly, this tends to preclude more amateur, hobbyist or semi-professional targeted applications, such as Photoshop Elements.

However, as an educator it is perfectly feasible (and greatly encouraged by Adobe) to create your own custom curriculum from the available materials. In fact it is almost a necessity given the diverse factors involved in each individual teaching situation - time allocated to the class, the skill level and age of the participants, delivery method, etc.

Here are some PDFs from the Adobe Digital Photography and Imaging curriculum that you might find useful in putting together a brief, 45 minute overview of digital image editing. They are all based on Photoshop, but as you are only going to be spending such a short time on the subject, you will be restricted to talking about general concepts, and your students will take away a "familiarity" with concepts and processes, rather than step-by-step instructions on how to do something in their chosen application.

Introduction to Digital Photography (PDF)

Overview of Adobe Photoshop (PDF)

How to create a new document (PDF)

How to resize, rotate, and crop images (PDF)

How to use layers (PDF)

How to use selection tools (PDF)

How to correct color (PDF)

How to fix images (PDF)

How to combine images (PDF)

How to generate file formats (PDF)

How to work with Camera Raw (PDF)

How to understand color management (PDF)

All the PDFs are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, which means you are free to share or adapt them as long as you attribute the original creator and do so for non-profitable purposes 🙂

To conclude your session on digital image editing, you may wish to suggest further educational resources. Personally, I highly recommend the Classroom in a Book series from Adobe Press, or the excellent video-based courses on LinkedIn Learning.

You may also want to let your students know that they can download a free 30-day trial of Photoshop Elements, or a free 7-day trial of Photoshop. That way your students can make an informed choice about which application they would prefer to continue working with. Whilst Photoshop Elements is a one-off purchase, the Creative Cloud Photography Plan does offer a very good value for money alternative route into digital image editing.

Hope you find the PDFs useful and good luck with your course 🙂 

[Richard_Batt]

Thanks Phil DC.  Some good material here.  Much appreciated.  And interestingly I have just recommended to someone about the freee trials for Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.  Good to see someone here is constructive and helpful as opposed to all those that abused me.  All I did was what someone on the Adobe Support Centre told me to do ... "post your complaint on the Community Forum".  He clearly set me up!