Effective photo processing in Photoshop. How to use Photoshop? Where to start learning Photoshop

Today we will consider the question: “How to use Photoshop?” After all, it is this graphic editor that allows you to solve the most complex problems associated with images. It should be said right away that exact instructions will not be provided here, but only recommendations that allow you to study on your own. So, next you will learn how to use Photoshop.

Preparation

First, let's look at the program itself. The latest version of this editor: Adobe Photoshop CS6. But you don't have to download latest update. The program interface and most of the tools have remained virtually unchanged since the release of the first version. Of course, the first update goes a long way back from CS6. But on initial stage Any version of this program is suitable for learning. By the way, the interface of this editor contains 27 various languages. There is also a Russian translation.

Basic Tools

To answer the question: “How to use Photoshop CS6,” you must first consider the main tools of the program. Since without them you will not be able to carry out even the simplest operations. In total, 4 groups of instruments can be distinguished. Below we will briefly look at each of them.

• Selection tools. A huge number of operations carried out in Photoshop occur precisely with the help of this group of tools. Selection can be done in different ways. For example, in any way using the lasso tool ( hotkey L) A small area can be separated. For more precise selections, it is recommended to use the “pen” (P). The choice of tools should be made depending on the situation.
• Drawing tools. Surely, you have already come across similar tools in other graphic editors. To draw a picture in any way, you can use a “pencil” or “brush”. Here it is possible to adjust the size and precision of the tools. If you made a little mistake or just want to erase a fragment you don’t need, you can use the eraser. To restore a lost background image, use the “archive brush”.
• Tools for correction. This group includes various tools for blurring, sharpening, reducing brightness, etc. These tools allow you to perform a wide variety of operations and effects.
• Additional tools. This category can include tools for filling, spot restoration, color selection, typing, etc.

More information

To understand how to learn to use Photoshop, you first need to familiarize yourself with all the tools. As you've probably already noticed, there are plenty of tools for image editing. But don’t think that it will take you to become familiar with all the tools. large number time. This process is always fun and fast.

Conclusion

The question “How to use Photoshop?” very often asked on specialized forums. And sometimes it remains without due attention, since it is impossible to explain to every beginner the basic things associated with this editor every time. It is recommended that you first try experimenting with the tools, filters, and other tools yourself. And after that, approach this issue more seriously. And after some time, you yourself will be able to advise others on how to use Photoshop.

Dear friends, if you are interested how to quickly learn to use photoshop, then this article is for you.

Honestly, I’ve been wanting to write an article like this for a long time, but the inspiration to write it only came today (I wrote the article in one go, it turned out how it turned out, maybe tomorrow I’ll add/change something else).

The article turned out to be voluminous, so sit down, I’m starting. Photoshop has always been my favorite hobby.

And now this hobby helps me earn money through the Internet.

Personally, I know only 2 ways to quickly master Photoshop (if you know another way, please write in the comments):

1. How to quickly learn to use Photoshop on your own (in this part, I will publish a summary of my experience described in the first part and make recommendations for beginners).

2. How to very quickly learn to use Photoshop (in this part I will tell you my observations about the most fast way studying the program).

Dear friend, I wrote this article in 2014, the data in it is almost still relevant :)

Only one thing has changed - I developed author's system on how to learn to confidently use Adobe Photoshop in 30 days.

Advantages Adobe training Photoshop at my school:

1. The most effective lessons

You will get access to 57 video lessons (after the first payment, access forever), which you can study at a time convenient for you.

The duration of the video lesson is from 3 to 20 minutes. I recommend studying 2-3 video lessons every day.

Each lesson is thought out to the smallest detail. All lessons must be studied sequentially, as the difficulty increases from lesson to lesson.

2. Recordings of all video lessons and copies of all source files

If you want to view it again important points lesson - then you can watch it online again or simply download the recording of the lesson to your computer.

All lessons have source files that you will receive along with the lesson.

You need to devote 20-30% of your free time to studying theoretical video lessons, and then devote the remaining time to consolidating the acquired knowledge.

Thus, by investing only 1-2 hours of your time per day, within 30 days you will easily and with pleasure gain the skill of confident proficiency in Adobe Photoshop.

You are enriched with knowledge, experience and a charge of strength for constant development.

3. Community and support that promotes you

Once you get to school, you are no longer left alone with your fears, unresolved problems and questions. In the person of people, like you, who are striving to improve their lives, and in the person of a wise and experienced mentor - Sergei Ivanov.

You receive strong support and a promoting, motivating environment. Together, it is much easier for you to maintain focus on development and achieve new results. And new friends will not let you lose faith in yourself again. Day by day you become better and stronger.

4. Get the skills you need

Learn to work confidently in Adobe Photoshop (master all necessary tools, learn to work with masks, layers, smart objects, make collages, process and restore photos with ease)

And also create logos, banners, website designs, website headers, avatars, unique pictures and many more etc.).

Get knowledge of where and how you can look for the first orders for your services.

5. Opportunity to ask questions to the coach

Only students of the school have the exclusive opportunity to ask the most intimate questions to me personally (Sergei Ivanov) and receive detailed answers.

6. Study online without leaving home

All training at the school takes place online. Therefore, all you need to learn is the Internet, a computer and your desire to be successful.

And so let's go according to the order stated above.

How to learn to use Photoshop yourself

And so, if you decide to learn Photoshop on your own, then read a few of my recommendations that helped me learn Photoshop (I hope you will find some of them useful for yourself).

- At first glance, after the first launch, the program seems complicated - but there is no need to be scared, nowadays there are a lot of sources using which you can quickly master this program (when I started learning Photoshop in 2003 there was not so much information on learning the program as there is now , everything had to be studied at random or bit by bit from books, but there were no good books, only reference books, and this was long, tedious and uninteresting, and they were also black and white, brr….

As soon as I remember, I shudder, I didn’t have the Internet yet, then dial-up appeared - this is when you use a modem via telephone line you go online... oh those were the days. And now everything has changed on the Internet, you can find a ton of information + excellent educational books have appeared on store shelves).

— To begin with, just open the program and start doing at least something at random. Helps me a lot this method at first, when studying a particular program, you can resort to training materials at any time (for example, when you need a quick result and there is very little time, and the program needs to be mastered in a very short time).

Pay great attention to the tools in the program, once you understand how each of them works, it will be easier for you to study in the future various lessons by Photoshop.

— Start learning and doing lessons on Photoshop on special sites with lessons (you can start with).

— I also recommend that beginners study books on Photoshop. I highly recommend Scot Kelby's books (Scott is truly a master of Photoshop, in his books in simple words complex things are described, all the lessons are step-by-step and with color illustrations, in general, this is the best for beginners, you read the lessons, do what the author says and gradually learn). I myself studied from books (I vouch for the quality of the books 100%). Books can be purchased at any bookstore, or can also be downloaded from the Internet. e-books- you just need to look.

— If you have a friend who already knows at least a little about the program, invite him to your place and let him give you a few lessons (at one time my sister gave me my first basic lessons), you can also get a job or do an internship (I worked in a photo salon, I did an internship in a printing house, and now I am a freelance web designer).

- learn to use search in search engines, in fact, in order to solve the question you are interested in, just enter the desired phrase in Google search engine, Yandex, or use the search on youtube.com (the site contains a large number of video tutorials on Photoshop), you need not to be lazy and try to find the answer yourself, practically to every question you have, there is already a ready-made answer: step by step instructions or video tutorial.

- if all else fails, try contacting people on forums; almost every site with Photoshop tutorials has a forum.

— I highly recommend that you constantly go to sites where people post their work, for example, I really like to go to freelance exchanges, look at the work of Photoshop masters (I choose a freelancer and look at his work), and gain inspiration.

— download ready-made add-ons for Photoshop (psd sources) and see how they are made, they can be found on almost every website about Photoshop (for example, on my website in this section).

- do your first works, lessons and publish them online, do not be afraid of criticism, listen to what people think about them and you will see how people begin to praise you for the work you have done, suggest how you can do it so that you can improve the result.

How to quickly learn to use Photoshop

What should you do if you really want to quickly learn the Adobe Photoshop program and don’t have free time? self-study program through books, websites, forums, the poke method, etc.

Then ready-made video courses on Photoshop come to our rescue - essentially all the information is laid out on the shelves and recorded on a DVD, all you have to do is set aside 1-2 days and you are a confident Photoshop user. All video courses are paid, but if you value your time and want quick results, then this is for you. All video courses are recorded by professionals and cannot be bought in a store, you can only order them online.

That's all I wanted to tell you about today. And to sum up, I would like to give you a few words of advice. First of all, I know that you will succeed if you don’t give up at the very peak of difficulties, don’t give up in the face of difficulties and you will definitely be able to learn how to use Photoshop well!

Good luck learning Photoshop!

How did you/are learning Photoshop, write in the comments, I’m very interested, perhaps you have some of your own techniques, please share, it will be interesting for people to read about them.

Best regards, Sergey Ivanov.

For people of many professions, such as designers and photographers, it is very important to have in their list of skills the ability to work in professional graphic editors, which open up many possibilities in working with images. One of the most influential and popular of them is rightfully considered Adobe Photoshop - a program that has a wide arsenal of various tools and functions that will take your work to a new, high level.

The program is truly professional, so learning how to use all its functions will not be easy. As in any business, it requires regular training, as well as comprehensive work with different sources of information about this software.

Version selection

First, you should choose which version you will use in the future. The most recent one presented is called Adobe Photoshop CC, but purchase and download the most latest version not at all necessary. All the most important and basic tools and functions have not changed since the release of the very first versions, so for beginners in this matter, Photoshop in a version, for example, CS6, is quite suitable. Of course, the difference between the first and last released program is great, but at first it is better to take a closer look at the old ones and master everything you need.

Interface and tools

After the version you need has been purchased and installed on your computer, you can begin to familiarize yourself with the features of its menu and interface. Launch Adobe Photoshop. First of all, go through the program menu, which is located horizontally at the top of the window. When mastering the top menu of Photoshop, you must first understand the main tabs: “File” is needed in order to open desired image to edit or create a new one. There is also a function that saves the result of the work. All items below have functions used to work on the image. So to open the desired picture, go to the “File” tab, then “Open” and select the one you want to edit.

It is also important to become familiar with all the tools for working with images, which are located in the column on the left. To find out what each of the program icons means, hover your cursor over it - a tooltip with the name will pop up. To make a tool active for work, you need to click on it with the left button of your mouse. The settings located under the horizontal top menu will also appear. Users of the program who have experience working with it always set certain parameters for the selected tool. Some of the instruments have a kind of triangle at the bottom right - it means the presence additional options, which can be activated by right-clicking on the triangle.

All instruments Adobe programs Photoshop has different capabilities. We divide them into four groups according to their functions:

1. Selection tools . Important group, with the help of which a huge number of actions are performed on images. Selecting the desired part of the picture can be done in several ways:

• using Lasso (hotkey L) you can arbitrarily select a small area;
• To make the selection area clearer and smoother, use the Pen tool (hotkey P).

The choice of tool depends on what results you want to achieve.

1. Drawing Tools . Found in a wide variety of editors like standard Paint. For arbitrary drawing, use the Brush and Pencil - they can adjust the thickness of the lines, as well as remove or correct defects by using the Eraser tool. If you need to restore a lost background image, then use the Archive Brush.
2. Correction tools . They perform a wide variety of functions: they help blur the image, add sharpness, and reduce brightness. With their help you can achieve very interesting and useful effects.
3. Additional tools . Created in order to fill, spot restore, select the necessary color, create text and much more.

It may seem that there are a lot of tools and their detailed analysis It will take a lot of time, but this is not true - it’s worth “playing” with each of them and learning about all its capabilities experimentally, then the learning process will go quickly and with interest.

Getting started with an image

To learn about the program's capabilities in more detail, let's open a picture in it that we would like to edit. Select in top menu“File”, then “Open” and select the desired image. As soon as it appears in the program window, you can start working.

You will see that a new menu with several tabs has appeared to the right of the image. The most important of them is called “Layers” - it is in it that all the actions that we perform on the image are carried out. In order to start working, you need to unlock it, since by default the image is in background. To do this, double-click on the image and the “Background” inscription in the “Layers” tab. Done - now our image is a layer.

Working with layers

Layers are the basis of working with Photoshop. Why are they needed? - anyone starting their training in the basics of the program will ask. Layers have many functions and only with their help can you create complex, original and professional works.

For example, you made an unsuccessful action with an image or an area where effects were applied. In this case, layers can serve as a kind of insurance if you use the “Create a duplicate layer” function. If you want to diversify the picture with additional inserts, make an inscription or drawing, then you can create new layer, which will be located above the main one, activate it and start working: attach new pictures or create your own drawing using a brush and pencil. Layers have their own transparency, which can be adjusted to full or semi-transparent.

Methods for learning Photoshop from scratch

Adobe Photoshop belongs to the group of precisely those programs, the development of which begins with the study of basic theoretical information, without which further use of the software is impossible. This way you will learn the foundation on which all the functions and options of the program are based. The theory will help you understand all the panels and windows of Photoshop, as well as masks, pixels, layers, filters, tools and selections. If you know the theory of their work, then mastering practical skills will be closer than it seems. Only after it has been studied important base, you can safely move on to practice.

At the beginning of your journey to mastering Adobe Photoshop, you will be able to use each tool and function separately, understand the principles of them independent work. Later, if you actively improve your skills and practice your image editing skills, you will begin to use winning combinations and combinations of program functions, connecting them so that the result is original and interesting. You'll even get your own corporate identity, without knowing it, you will use the tools of color correction, light and shadow, taking into account all your thoughts and ideas. But before we achieve such results, let’s work through the theory by choosing the most appropriate method for learning how to work with Photoshop.

Learn to work in Adobe Photoshop using a tutorial

Learning the basics of a program from the simplest to the most complex is a fairly popular method. For this purpose, special literature is used, the choice of which is very wide and varied. Now in any bookstore you can find a tutorial on your version of Photoshop, which will be equipped with illustrations, diagrams and detailed descriptions all actions. Such books can also be found in electronic form, simply downloaded from the Internet. There is also a simpler option that does not involve purchasing a paper version or searching for an electronic one - special educational sites that look almost the same as books. You'll start with the most simple basics and gradually move on to professional functions - very convenient way for those who are willing to spend time reading.

We recommend paying attention to authors such as Scott Kelby and Martin Irving. Among the sites there are also favorites that are popular with many people: psand.ru/, photoshop.demiart.ru/ and photoshop-master.ru/.

Video tutorials on working in PS

A simple way to learn the program, which makes it very easy to remember all the new information. You simply watch all the actions performed by the author of the video and repeat after him. There are videos on the Internet on a wide variety of topics - so it’s not difficult to find any lesson on YouTube.

The only disadvantage that can be identified in this method of learning is that the information received remains in memory in parts, because there are very few authors of videos who could explain the principles of working with the program sequentially and step by step. This method can often lead to the information received being confused in the beginner’s head and preventing holistic, consistent learning.

Video courses on Photoshop

Relatively new way development Photoshop programs. You are purchasing a training course that was compiled by professionals and is really aimed at ensuring that all the information comes to you in the right form. Training occurs sequentially and includes all the most important information.

The authors approach the creation of such video tutorials truly responsibly: you pay for a product that you can later recommend to your friends and acquaintances, so the authors do everything possible to ensure that you do not feel like you wasted money.

Courses can be very diverse - both for beginners, where you can gradually master all the basics of the program, as well as advanced levels for already established professionals, where complex techniques for working with images are discussed.

Courses worth checking out: photoshop-master.org/disc149/ and photoshop-master.org/disc156/.

Learning the program by trial and error

A method that every person has resorted to at least once, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be about mastering any computer program. Very often, when purchasing a new thing, we do not use the attached instructions, but decide to research everything on our own - and only after we encounter problems in studying, we begin to look for answers to our questions in specialized sources.

You can do the same thing with Photoshop. If you are a confident computer user who has intuition, insight and creativity, then you can try to master the program yourself. In the first stages, you may be able to master everything you need, but further on you will not be able to do without the help of tips if you want to achieve a professional level of proficiency in Adobe Photoshop.

Mastering such popular program useful for people of various professions and hobbies: Photoshop can be used for photography, for business, for design, as well as simply for personal purposes, making your photos more beautiful and of higher quality. Working in Adobe Photoshop is a creative process in which everyone will find something interesting. In order to master this software as completely as possible, keep your studies regular and return to the program at least every two days - then you will get better at it faster and will be able to create real masterpieces on your computer.

Today Adobe Photoshop CS6 is the most powerful tool on working with raster images. To learn how to use this multifunctional graphic editor from Adobe Systems, desire alone is not enough. Photoshop's great friends and helpers are perseverance, patience, attentiveness and a sense of proportion. If you have exactly these qualities, then let's start studying.

We hope that our short excursion into the world of Photoshop will inspire novice users to study the editor in depth.

Photoshop is graphic editor , the leader among all programs that are designed for creating and processing images.

Today, thousands and even hundreds of thousands of minds want to learn how to work in Photoshop, but do not know where to start. Many people think Photoshop learning process complex and lengthy, and some manage to become an advanced user of this program in no more than a month.

How do they manage this, and where is the most easy way I'll tell you about learning Photoshop next. First, let's look at the main ways you can learn Photoshop, and then I will tell you the most effective and fastest (in my opinion).

Traditional way learning something new is books. Yes, master Photoshop from books, this is not a bad way, but it is tedious and complicated. You will have to try to repeat what is described in the books, and this is not always so easy. But if you decide on this option, I recommend that you buy or download one of best books by Photoshop and start studying. But we have better ways, more on them later.

Correspondence courses

There are courses for almost any " profession"and of course" photoshopper"This is no exception. Most likely in your city there are several, and maybe many, teachers who recruit small groups and give. Minus this method is that it is usually very expensive. And plus, you don’t get any help in the future, go to courses and goodbye. Let's add to this that the class time may not be convenient for you; usually the teacher adapts to himself.

Learn to work in Photoshop using video courses, - this is the method that I like best and exactly this option I used it in my case to learn how to work in Photoshop. The point here is this: we buy a high-quality video course online DVD disc, we receive it by mail and start studying.

At the beginning of the article, I already said that many beginners manage to learn to use Photoshop very quickly. I was talking about video courses. They buy a CD on which the author recorded Photoshop lessons from his computer screen. The author shows from the very beginning how to work in this program, and it comes to the point that you already begin to repeat after the teacher what you previously thought were the most difficult things and turn into a Photoshop Master.

High-quality video courses, I’ll tell you about one of them below, will make you Photoshop masters in about a month. Usually the duration of the course is about 15 hours, the same amount will have to be spent on practice, that is, repeating all the actions after the teacher.
That is, if you spend an hour every day, then you can complete a video course lasting 15 hours (+15 hours of practice) in a month.

There are a lot of advantages to learning Photoshop through video courses, here are some:

1. Much cheaper compared to traditional courses.

2. You choose the time when you study.

3. If you don’t understand something, you can rewind the lesson to the beginning and watch it again.

4. If difficulties arise during the training, then you go to the customer support forum and receive a detailed answer from the author or his assistants!

5. You can watch all the lessons at least once.

6. You can go back to the lessons again and again if you forgot something.

The disk is yours, and you have the right to watch video lessons as much as you want. To avoid any questions, right here I’ll give you a link to one of the best courses on mastering Photoshop. This video course is called “Photoshop from scratch in video format”.

I learned how to work in Photoshop using this video course and therefore I confidently recommend it! The duration of the classes is more than 15 hours, respectively, after about a month after starting the study, an hour a day, you will turn from a beginner into a Photoshop Master.

All I can do is wish you good luck, and quick learning Photoshop!