How to Learn Photoshop Without Expensive Classes or Books

If you have ever looked at an advertisement or a flier or postcard and thought to yourself, "I wish I knew how to do that" or "I wish I could be that creative", then this article is for you. Today you will learn how to jump right into designing eye catching graphics that can be used in any number of applications, from fliers for your church or company or pictures for the holidays or whatever use you may have.

Photoshop is a complicated and sometimes scary and overwhelming piece of software. When you first open the application, as a novice you may not even know where to begin. Well it is fairly simple once you break it down. First of all, you must start by opening a new document. If you know the size you need, Photoshop has a list of common sizes, or you can input your own dimensions. First lets review resolution before we open our document. There are many resolution options available but you will only need to know about 2 for starters. 300 DPI (Dots Per Inch) is suited for printing and 72 DPI is best suited for use on screen (i.e. the internet). Now to open your first document you will need to start Photoshop of course, when it has loaded go to File > New. A popup will appear and you can select from the list of presets (drop down menus) or enter your own dimensions. Remember to pay attention to Width and Height in order to get the desired size and layout, otherwise you will have to start over or change the layout in a more advanced menu. Now pay attention to the Resolution and type 300 or 72 depending on what you need the graphic for. Choose OK and your first document has been created. It is always a good idea to save your work often, so go ahead and do that now before you start any work.

Go to the Window menu and just open up everything to find out where stuff is at for future reference, but be advised that several palettes will open up in the same dock window so once a palette opens, look at it to see what other menus are included (they will be visible as greyed out tabs along the top, just click on one to bring it to the front).

One of the most common uses a person has for Photoshop, as a beginner and non-professional will be to enhance and "spice up" photographs. First you will need to put that photo in your Photoshop document. To do this go to File > Place and choose the image from your computer, click OK and your picture will be inserted into the document on a new layer. Or you can simply open the image within Photoshop by going to File > Open and choosing the image, then you can drag and drop it into you open Photoshop document.

Now you ask, "what is a layer?", a layer is what Photoshop (and most other graphic applications) use to separate images and graphics for easy editing and manipulation. To create a new layer at any time you can either go to Layer > New > Layer or you can use the Layers palette (found in the Windows menu if not already open) and click the "Create a new layer" button (hovering your mouse over any icon will give a brief description so you can easily find things). Now that you have multiple layers all you have to do is click on the appropriate one to work on it.

Hovering over icons brings me to my next important point. Photoshop makes it easy to learn what is available. You can easily find out what an icon or button is for by once again hovering your mouse over it. You can also browse through the menus at the top to see all the available options. Don't be afraid to click around at first to test out an unfamiliar icon or menu item. If you don't like what that item does to your document you can always undo the operation by choosing Edit > Undo or Control+Z (PC) / Command+Z (Mac). Don't forget to save often.

Another recommendation is to take a "Snapshot" occasionally for easy reference and to return to a previous state at any time. To do this you need to have the History menu open (found in the Window menu), find the snapshot icon or menu item on the History palette and click it (different Photoshop versions have this located in different places, so you may have to look around a bit, but it will be worth it), this will create a literal snapshot of your work and place it near the top of the History palete for easy access, just click it and you will be taken back to that previous state. Don't forget to save.

The most important advice I have is to play around until you get what you want. Now that you know how to start out, it will be fun and easy to learn new things all the time. Photoshop has so many filters and options, you will never run out of great things to do to make your photos or any other art piece you are working on stand out. Your friends and family will all wonder how you did it and from my experience they will try to get you to make stuff for them as well, but that's a personal choice. It just might be fun.

If you would like more detailed information on any aspects or functions in Photoshop please let me know and I can write a detailed article and send it to you.