Tips to learn Photoshop – You will know how to use the latest Photoshop CC too

Written by – Lydia Chai
Guest Blogger

With gratitude, I thank the web owner for inviting me to write a post on Adobe Photoshop CC. I am a proficient user of the Photoshop software for good solid ten years. As a matter of fact, I am currently a graphic design freelancer who uses Photoshop almost every day. I am glad to share with you little tips and knowledge about this software. 

In spite of the different versions introduced by Adobe for the Photoshop software, the general tips are applicable. I will be sharing the top tips based on my experience of learning how to use this software by myself. Never attended any courses or lessons but still managed to use the software to make income.  

Tip 1: Learn the names of the tools. 

Before you want to start learning the very first tutorial of the software, you should learn the names of the tools first. Without knowing which name is for which tool button, you will have a hard time understanding the abundant of Photoshop tutorials on the Internet. In spite of a good number of tutorials are made in video nowadays, there are still many being done in the text form. Not all tutorials will include print screen shots of how the button tools look like. Therefore, it is important for you to be familiar with the tool names. To know the names, you just need to move your cursor to the tool button. The name of the tool will be displayed. This should be the first thing you do when you want to learn how to use this software. 

Tip 2: Learn from tutorials on the Internet. 

As mentioned earlier, there are countless of tutorials online written by numerous experienced Photoshop users. You just need to google the tutorial which you feel interested to learn. For example, “how to remove the background of a picture using Photoshop”. It is very important to have the phrase “using Photoshop” behind each search to ensure that the tutorial displayed is for Photoshop and not other graphic software. If you find difficulty in understanding the text based tutorial, look out for videos. These video tutorials are highly recommended for amateur users as the steps are shown one after another. 

Tip 3: Get all the “equipments” ready 

When using Photoshop, the default brushes and patterns are limited. You can always get beautiful brushes downloaded for free from the Internet. These brushes will do great help in your masterpiece, giving it a glow that often provides the wow impact. All you need to do is just google for ‘free Photoshop brushes’ and you will have a list of them to be downloaded and installed to your Photoshop brush list. However, it is important to know that brushes created in the later version cannot be used in the older version. On the other hand, brushes created in the older version can be used as normal in the later version. Other than brushes, you can also get free patterns downloaded online. It is also a bonus to have a good selection of fonts saved in your laptop/computer so that you can have a play with different fonts in your art work. Again, you can get a lot of good free fonts online. 

Basically, these are the 3 main fundamental tips that I would like to share. Every different version of Photoshop has its own uniqueness and bonus as compared relatively to the previous and older versions. The fundamental knowledge about the software is mandatory for the updated version only adds more tools and functions to the software. The old tools and functions usually will retain in the updated version. 

Last year in 2013, the Adobe released the latest Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud (CC). To use this software, you will have to rent it for a month or a year at a time via an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. The time given to use the software is proportional to how long are you are paying for the subscription. 

The CS version of Photoshop ended at CS6. Then, the Photoshop CC is being introduced. Of course, with the new name suggested, there are many new surprises brought by this powerful software. Below is the list of new features added to Photoshop CC which the Photoshop CS6 do not have: 

•  Creative Cloud Libraries 
•  Extract Assets 
•  Improved guides
•  3D PDF support
•  Smart Object improvements
•  Improved Layer Comps
•  Blur Gallery motion effects
•  Focus Mask
•  Improvements to Content-Aware technology
•  Smarter Smart Guides
•  Desktop fonts from Adobe Typekit
•  Font Search
•  Expanded 3D printing capabilities 
•  Improved 8.1 touch and stylus support
•  Expanded Adobe Mercury Graphics Engine support
•  Experimental features
•  Intelligent upsampling, even faster 
•  Perspective Warp 
•  Adobe Generator
•  All-new Smart Sharpen *
•  Camera Shake Reduction *
•  Adobe Camera Raw 9 and Camera Raw as a filter * 
•  Extended features included 
•  Workflow time-savers

The features with asterisk symbols are features added to the software specially to cater for photographers’ needs. These features make photography editing work very much easier and time saving. With the older version of Photoshop, the work can still be done perfectly but time wastage is a major issue concerned. 

Photoshop CC is designed to fit the needs of not only the graphic designer and illustrator, also for the photographers and 3D artists. The Photoshop software is usually the number one choice for quality. Despite the fact that it may be slightly more complex than other software, it is still the best for its features and functions that include everything you need when dealing with graphics. With the blast of Photoshop CC lately, the software of course still reigns the first place in the graphic industry.