fergmark Loc: norwalk connecticut

If you know someone who can sit down with you and sort of show you the ropes that might be kind of an ice breaker for you. I was fortunate enough to have someone go through the basics with me. I know that made a big difference, rather than going in cold.

Nikon1201

One of my favorites on utube is Photos In Color with Ed Gregory. He explains in a very simple way also Blake Rudy’s and Adobe.com with Juliane Kost.

UTMike Loc: South Jordan, UT

Because it is intimidating, Harold! If you can, get Lightroom. This enables you to avoid most of PS and, when you have to use it, you can concentrate only on what you need at the time.

photoman022 Loc: Manchester CT USA

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

Learning Photoshop is like learning the Piano or Keyboard. Some people take lessons for years and get nowehere. Others learn 3 or 4 chords and start playing songs, getting better as they play. I have used Photoshop for years without using layers. The majority of tweaks that will make your picture look good are on a handful of sliders and single clicks. And everything can be undone, and you can save your edited image with a new name so you can't harm your original.

These are the items I use most in Photoshop, no layers involved. Under the Image tab: Cropping, auto color, auto tone, auto contrast, image size, image rotation. Under the Image/Image Adjustment tab: Brightness/Contrast, Hue/Saturation, Shadows/Highlights. Sometimes I use the Healing Brush tool on the left screen border icons to remove dust specs. Sometimes I use the Unsharp mask under the Filter/Sharpen tab to sharpen an image or the Gaussian blur under the Filer/Blur tab to remove noise. Very rarely I will use the Filter/Lens Correction/Custom tab to correct perspective. You can learn to use those sliders and clicks in a few hours. With a little practice you can use the ones you need in just a few minutes.

If you want to accompany yourself singing Rock and Roll or Blues songs on a piano or keyboard, you can learn the C, F, G and Am chords in a couple of hours too.

Doyle Thomas Loc: Vancouver Washington ~ USA

good advice, when i started with PS 2.4 i spent 4 months 14-16 hours a day getting up to speed by figuring what i wanted to do and then figuring out how. at that time there was not a lot of PS support on the net so it was books books books.


any learning curve is exposintial and i like to use the phrase "getting to one", getting there is slow but you double that and the curve starts moving more rapidly.


these days the net is rich with how to but not why to.

Nikon1201

Bobspez is on the money , go to utube and put in PS for beninners. I’ve been using LR and PS since 2011 and I learn something new all the time . Do what Bob says and start with baby steps .

aellman Loc: Boston MA

The reason you feel intimidated is because it's really HARD. >Alan

bpulv Loc: Buena Park, CA

That doesn't make any sense at all. Obviously, if you were comfortable with both PS and LR you would have understood that and not made a suggestion that will only add to the intimidation. If he is intimidated by PS HE WILL ALSO BE INTIMIDATED BY LR; especially the filing system in LR.

Harold should just look at the free Creative Cloud Adobe video "Get to know Photoshop" (I previously told him how to find it in his CC software) and he will be fine. Once he is comfortable with that, he can progress to the other Adobe videos. The Adobe videos are very clear and free to all Creative Cloud subscribers. Many of them are also available to non subscribers.

Nikon1201

People who say it’s hard don’t want to learn and produce quality work, they probably use Elements or Picassa. Take the step you won’t regret it.

sterrill Loc: missouri

Photoshop is complex to say the least. The phlearn videos are wonderful but some introductory videos or courses would be helpful first. With photoshop you have to learn a little before you can learn more. Hang in there.

NJFrank Loc: New Jersey

I am by no means an expert. But I try to learn something new from PS every week. Whatever I have learned I will "play" with it on a shot i am not too concerned about keeping. I find YouTube to be an excellent source of information. Good luck and just dive in. The water is great.

JCam Loc: MD Eastern Shore

You just blew off a lot of damn good photographers who just don't want to spend infinite hours on a computer (nic pros) to obtain perfection in their minds that will never be recognized or verbalized except here on UHH when the Poster asks for comment.

jdmarks64

I've been using PS for years, going back to PS3, While by no means an expert, I feel pretty comfortable with the things I use it for. Over the years, I have found PS tutorials extremely helpful, although that means sometimes having to watch and re-watch them numerous times to pick up all the subtleties.

wds0410 Loc: Nunya

You are not alone. I found it unbelievably complex and convoluted so I just abandoned ship and went with a different photo editing solution.