lyndacast

I am a hobbyist. I do not sell my images, do not print them in large formats beyond 11x14 or 16x20, and seldom enter contests.
I shoot in RAW and import the images to LR. I use LR, both the mobile version and the LRC version, but do a great deal of my editing on my MacBook Air and IPad Air.

I am very comfortable with LR and yet I feel that I should also use Photoshop, since some of my photographer friends use it with ease. I am pretty good with technology but for the life of me, I cannot grasp Photoshop!

I have looked at You Tube videos, signed up for Udemy courses on Photoshop for beginners, but I can’t get the hang of it….
Have any of you found on line instruction that is effective and gives a step by step process?

I honestly don’t get the point of Photoshop…except for creative changes to or manipulation of an image. What am I missing?

Orphoto Loc: Oregon

Lynda. I just wanted to let you know that you are not alone. I use Adobe Camera Raw (functionally identical to Lightroom) as much as possible and photoshop merely as needed. In my own use I find photoshop useful for focus stacking and some panoramas. Also is much better for object deletions and cloning.

Having said that Lightroom/ACR continues to advance and encroach with local adjustments and luminence masking.

While a user of photoshop I avoid layers as much as possible.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

You're not missing anything ...

Although I don't subscribe, I've had much the same experience with the comparable LR6 and PSE. But for me, I've forced myself to learn PSE to a pretty good extent over the past few years, even though I'm using an old PSE-11 dating to roughly 2011. About 10-years, that's how long it has taken me to find a use for PSE and to figure it out to the extent PSE supports my needs. Although my uses are limited, I'm into PSE now about once per day.

PS/PSE and LR are almost completely different ways of thinking about your images, until you get really experienced and can begin to see where they're the same / similar. I use only utube videos for learning PSE, but it takes the 'right' problem and the properly worded question to find a video / group of videos that actually show what / how to answer that problem.

Consider two basic problems that PS/PSE is the solution and things that can't be done in LR:

1) An image of a bird flying that can be repositioned in the frame, but one of the wing tips is cut-off because they were so close to the edge of the frame.

2) A similar problem where a landscape is too tightly cropped and I need a larger 'canvas' to create a bit more sky.

The idea of 'canvas' doesn't exist in LR as I can't merge two images into one. Nor can I take the wing-tip from one side of the bird and flip it to merge onto the missing wing-tip on the other side of the bird, even after I've 'moved' the bird within the frame. Or, alternatively, nor within LR can I create more canvas (sky) around the bird so they seem to be in the middle of the new / larger frame (aka canvas).

Watching people use PS for problems similar to what I've encounter showed me where / how the tool fills gaps that LR cannot address. Where / how I frequently use PSE, I now can do without any help. But, anything I don't use often or have never used, I have watch one or multiple videos to see how it's done, including needing to 'translate' from PS to PSE-11.

Adobe recognized PS was overkill for most photographers, both in capability and per-license cost. If you don't have a better image of the bird with the wing-tip cut-off, most photographers just live with the wing-tip cut-off. Local adjustments with the LR brushes or global adjustments with the Develop Module cover 99% of most photographer's needs. When you come up with problems there's no way LR can do it, there's your 1% for PS. When you learn it a bit more, it might be grow to 2%, maybe higher, but still never going over 10% of all your images when you work first in LR.

Xmsmn Loc: Minnesota

Paul
Thanks for that detailed analysis. Answers to questions I didn’t know how to ask…
Mark

Ysarex Loc: St. Louis

Noooooooo! You're doing the right thing now. Use LR to process your raw files.

I started teaching Photoshop to college and university students in 1992. Over the years I got very good at Photoshop, but I almost never use it now.

I process photos every day 7 days a week. I go hundreds and hundreds of photos before I find one where I really need Photoshop.

When LR was released I started to use that and eventually started to teach it as well. As LR improved I figured it out -- use LR and get the job done. If you can stay away from Photoshop you win.

So I looked at the reasons why I was also using Photoshop and determined where LR was weak and was pushing me toward Photoshop. Back in 2012 I decided that avoiding Photoshop was a worthwhile enough goal that I switched from LR to Capture One which would do an even better job than LR of allowing me to keep away from Photoshop. (LR has improved since then and closed that gap some so stick with LR).

There are some tasks/jobs that still require Photoshop. Paul noted some cases. Portrait skin re-touch pretty much requires Photoshop and any kind of composite work requires Photoshop. Fortunately I don't have to do those things.

Why avoid Photoshop? Because it monkey wrenches your workflow. LR (and my C1) are parametric editors and a benefit of parametric editing if it's implemented properly is a 100% non-destructive raw workflow and non-linear re-editability. Some people don't care about that or care about it as much as I do. I really care about that and so I wanted Photoshop out of my life and fortunately I've pretty much succeeded.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Photoshop is a really complex program with lots of capabilities. In fact it can do so many things that it can be really confusing. Online tutorials do help, but they're generally oriented toward specific things. I don't know of any really basic online tutorials because I know how to do the basic things after using it for a few years. Your friends are probably in the same boat.

When I encounter something that takes a real effort to learn, I give it a try for a while to see how I can do. It sounds like that's where you are now. When I get stuck, I forget about it and do something else for a few months. Then come back to it later. By that time I probably have something specific that I want to do. That's where the online tutorials come in handy. You have to learn how to ask the right question of Google to find the right tutorial. Once you get started the rest of it will fall into place as you go along.

I've been using Photoshop for more than 15 years now, but I probably don't use more than 10% of its capabilities. But I find it really useful when I need it.

Things I use PS for:

Probably the first thing was to fix an old photo of my grandparents and their 4 daughters. It was taken at their 50th anniversary and is one of very few photos of the family as adults since they spread out all over the country. One of the daughters has her eyes closed. Using Photoshop I was able to take one of the other daughters' eyes and use it to replace the closed eyes of the blinking daughter. It really improved the family photo.

I have used it several times to fix blinkers in group shots. Sometimes I could swap heads instead of just eyes.

I have used it to remove distracting elements from photos. It's fairly easy to blur the background and leave the subject to stand out more. It's fairly easy to brighten a backlit subject and dim the background.

I like to transmogrify images. It's for my enjoyment. I have a photo of my Prius drawing a manure spreader and you can see that the manure spreader is working to spread compost. Now, a manure spreader doesn't have a power source. It takes power from the tractor that is pulling it with a drawbar (like a trailer hitch). The Prius doesn't have a drawbar to pull the spreader, nor can I take power from the nonexistent Prius Power TakeOff to drive the spreader mechanism. But with Photoshop, it's all possible. It's one of the ways I have fun with my photos.

Look on Photoshop as a long-term project. Take breaks occasionally and come back when you have something specific you want to try. Find an online video tutorial (or several). The advantage there is that you can pause the video and/or back it up to repeat something you didn't quite get. (A lot of tutorial people speak quickly and run the barely visible cursor around the screen wildly).

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

I love this. "Transmogrify" is a word that suggests you were a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip reader. THAT was brilliance on the order of Pogo.

The story about faking a photo of a Prius pulling a manure spreader is hilarious. We at one point had four Priuses in the family. They are indeed versatile vehicles, but that would be a stretch!

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Don't try to use all of PS, just check reviews and see what it does better than LR or that LR doesn't do at all and only send the photos that need that treatment and then save them back to LR. Trying to learn all of PS is pretty much a full time job. Esp. when you figure in knowing all of LR.

Strodav Loc: Houston, Tx

I just got done with an online PS course. It was very challenging, taking a lot of time and practice. I had to go over many sections several times to get things to sink in and it’s going to take more practice to get good at it. The course instructor made a statement that is very appropriate: “Lr enhances the truth, PS adds the lies”. What I took from the course is that PS is a artistic tool more than an image enhancement tool.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

I can't say if this tip helps with every PS version, but if you create a new layer as the 1st step for each new edit-action, you avoid a lot of struggles. I've made this observation from how my PSE-11 software works and how every PS training video also always seems to have the 1st step of a new layer and then the action being demonstrated. With 'layers' being unavailable in LR, it took me a while to drive this best-practice into my own PSE usage / understanding.

Cany143 Loc: SE Utah

Rather than asking what exactly you 'cannot grasp' about Photoshop, I'd instead ask 'what is it exactly that you want to grasp?'

Over time, and including the time before Lightroom existed, Photoshop has evolved. Its functionality --its usefulness, generally speaking, among most non-specialists (i.e., regular, normal ‘camera people’ who wanted/needed to adjust aspects of their images a bit, maybe altering its gamut or sharpening or any of a dozen other tweaks one might want to do globally-- grew from one version to the next, but much of that evolving functionality didn't seem necessary for the photographer who felt their image didn't need much to get it to where they thought it should go. The only problem (with that statement) is that there is a difference between 'where they thought it should go' and 'where that image could potentially go', and the latter of those are something no software can predict for you; you've got to decide that for yourself. In other words, what is it you want to grasp? Which makes the question more a matter of one’s aesthetic than it does of one’s use of software.

I started off using Ps4. At the same time (mid-90's?), however, I found PaintShopPro 4 slightly more useful for certain things I was doing (specialized in reducing otherwise difficult to see archaeological subjects down to two-tone b&w graphics), and tweaking to one extent or another scanned slides or negs both of my own making or for a local (film shooting) pro who knew plenty about paper & chemistry printing but nothing about digital imaging or printing from digital files. Some years later, after making the switch to digital shooting myself, I added Lr 5 to my 'arsenal', and that simply quickened some of my processes somewhat, but didn't substantially change a great deal as such. Now, 80 to 90% of my processing can be done quickly and elegantly in (yes, the latest subscription version of) LrC, but even now, with its expanded functionality (the 'selection' tools in particular), I've yet to encounter an image I cannot improve --which for me means 'make to my liking/preference'-- without some use of Ps. Whether that 'improvment' be made by use of layers or masks or –moreso anything else-- the use of specific, localized, targeted selections --the content of which may be modified in some manner or another-- that are simple (after learning how to make them) in Ps but not possible with Lr, without those I'd be lost. Or frustrated. Because I look at an image and think, what exactly does this image require....?, not 'what button should I click, or what slider is there to slide' that'll make the imagel 'look good.' Bear in mind, though, the proposition that I do not consider local adjustments to be manipulations as such; what's been done has been done for a reason to accentuate or de-accentuate some form or color or something elemental in the image itself, nothing other unless I intend to do so. Which I suppose might be considered 'creative', but not in the sense of me trying to make some sort of Sci-Fi poster image out of a picture of a rock or a tree or a sky when a heightened actuality is actually what I intend.

Your results may vary, of course. But Ps ‘pointless’? I think not.

Ps is no more difficult than any other computer program. The tools are pretty obvious. But Ps willl only do what YOU tell it to do. There’s no need to ‘learn’ every capability that Ps contains; it would, however, behoove you to learn the few you actually want to know, and doing so is in no way difficult.

Douglas Tharp Loc: Texas

Yes photoshop is one big complex program. Took photoshop at the local JCC to get a introduction. It was the only way, I could lean it.

Education

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

Adobe has many tutorials built into photoshop which are very helpful. A lot of the tools are the same as LR. I took an evening adult course to learn the basics. There are also many books out there on the subject.
The one I used was, Teach Yourself Visually "Adobe Photoshop CC" the fast and easy way to learn, by Mike Wooldridge and Brianna Stuart

mvetrano2 Loc: Commack, NY

These answers to your original question are great! I also use Lightroom exclusively. I have Photoshop, but never use it because of the difficulty in understanding the reasons for having it. I've tried many times using Photoshop for photo editing, adjusting, clean-up and cropping, but realize that these things are all I do, and Lightroom does these things easily.

I have watched general tutorials on Photoshop and found them difficult to follow. So Photoshop just sits there, unused on my computer.

Cany143's reply hit home in making me realize for the things I do to photos, Lightroom is all I need and will probably never need any of the facilities offered in Photoshop. So, why even try to figure out what to do with Photoshop and concentrate on all that is offerd in Lightroom.

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

For simple processing of an image, LR is fine. But there are times when masking and layering can improve a photograph, combining different versions of the same image smoothly and seamlessly. Or you might wish to add text to an image. The fact of layering makes PS extremely powerful, as well as selection to do local adjustments, just for a start. I never use LR; I use ACR, which is similar to the develop module in LR, and then go into PS for everything else.