Studying Photoshop

Babette08

Before I begin forgive my lack of knowledge on the whole Digital Art world!!

Basically I studied fine Art in NCAD, dropped out after two years and am now an Accounts manager - where did it all go wrong?? Have neglected the creative side for a long time, life just got in the way, but starting to get that itch again.

Was thinking of doing a part-time photoshop course in the comings weeks..have never used but it interests me and is probably the only graphic design related part time course out there at the moment?

Is this likely to be of any benefit? How easy is it to self teach? Are there any freelance photoshop artists out there? Any help / advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Duggy747

I thought myself how to use photoshop. But then I knew how to use Paint Shop Pro for years so I had a little bit of foundation.

A great way to teach yourself is to google about Photoshop tutorials or try this site, it's got excellent tutorials for all sorts of things and most of them are broken down so even a complete novice can do them.

Once you get any bit good you'll get hooked on Photoshop.

www.pslover.com

Hope that helps

heggie

if you want to work in graphic design, knowing photoshop is not nearly enough, and not even the 1st program you should start with

cosgrove80

I'm self-taught in Photoshop. I couldn't begin to call myself an expert, far from it but it's easy enough to learn by yourself. If you've used other design programs at all or at least proficent with using a computer the inital shock won't be too severe

There are several ways you could learn:

Just play around with it It's fairly intuitive, so the basics can be learnt by trial and error.
Do the evening course (obviously can't comment on it's quality)
Buy a book. I can't be of much help on which one but a quick look on Amazon should help you in the right direction.
Lynda.com Tutorials These aren't free, quite expensive but they are basically video tutorials taking you through things step by step. Personally I'd prefer this way of learning.

If you want to get into Graphic Design other programs you should look at are
Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Indesign or Quark Express. These are used for print design. Illustrator is for creating imagery and type and Indesign & Quark are used for page layouts etc.

I'm not in the Industry myself but I think the software you would need in order of preference would be:

Illustrator
Indesign/Quark
Photoshop

I'm sure someone else here could give you a more detailed answer though

Deliverance

Babette08 wrote: »

Before I begin forgive my lack of knowledge on the whole Digital Art world!!

Basically I studied fine Art in NCAD, dropped out after two years and am now an Accounts manager - where did it all go wrong?? Have neglected the creative side for a long time, life just got in the way, but starting to get that itch again.

Was thinking of doing a part-time photoshop course in the comings weeks..have never used but it interests me and is probably the only graphic design related part time course out there at the moment?

Is this likely to be of any benefit? How easy is it to self teach? Are there any freelance photoshop artists out there? Any help / advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

I think doing an evening course in an application that your interested in is a good thing. If the course teaches you about bitmaps and vectors etc then that is a good start. Plus it would provide some discipline as to the completion of tasks as well as working with other people with similar interests.

After that their are plenty of online courses and training CD's which are excellent. The total training and Lynda.com series are quite good. I'd reccommend Lynda.com followed by Total training. Once you get to grips with photoshop these skills could be transfered over to other applications like illustrator etc. Good Luck.

MikeyNT

Self thought here also out of necessity when I worked part time on graphic design. Up to then I only used it for photographic editing. I'm sure I am still only scrathcing the surface in terms of it's features, but I get by.

I'm sure a structured course would be beneficial though, it would help avoid developing bad habits.

peejay1986

If its Graphic Design you're looking to get in to then I'd focus on learning Illustrator rather than Photoshop. I rarely use Photoshop anymore as most of my work now is vector based.

Babette08

Thanks everyone for the advice, really appreciate it as I don't know anyone in the industry. I think I'll definitely do the course as it does seem to be the only evening one in Dublin. I'll also buy illustrator as it seems to be the most suited program to graphic design/digital art

Thanks again!!

eamon234

And don't forget to have a go at the Photoshop Tennis on this forum - it's great practice!