I have been (slowly) learning Photoshop Elements 7, which is supposed to be a trimmed down and presumably easier to use version of the professional one, but even this program is fairly extensive in its capabilities. I admit the learning process is daunting to me. I have this problem with all types of advanced software I try to tackle, and tend to give up too easily.
Now I know how to find thousands upon thousands of tutorials, but I can’t help but feel like I’m not doing this in the most efficient way possible. When learning new software (not necessarily PSE, but anything), what do you do? Read the manual cover to cover? Buy an auxiliary guide? Go through tutorials systematically, as many as you can find, or just the ones that interest you? I usually end up just looking up the specific things I want to do, but this is very limiting and sometimes frustrating as I want to get the most out of the software but feel like I’m not really doing it this way.
First, I play around in the program for a few hours and try to get a feel for it by experimenting. Then I look up all the basic functions in the manual. Then I mostly look up tutorials for the things that I’m trying to accomplish. Then I scan through many other tutorials until I catch something that intrigues me. A lot of times this means I have to go through previous tutorials until I catch up. This can be very frustrating, but I have patience.
I too don’t feel as though I get the most out of software.
For Photoshop? I took a class (essentially just a tutorial with a grade). Everything else? I just open the software and do stuff with it. I familiarize myself with all the commands. I use online help extensively. I will read manuals, but most software I get, the help file is enough.
I’m sure there are people that are wizards with software that I think I know well. But I don’t really care, as my point is just to get done what I need to get done.
I almost always buy 2 or 3 books, of which I’ll pick and choose the chapters that I want to read fully, and then I will skim the rest. While the skimming doesn’t teach me what I want, it will allow me to know what is in the books in case I need that feature in the future. After a level of proficiency higher than novice, I will also google for ways to do the things I’m trying to do.
Since new software no longer comes with manuals and online help is utterly useless I try to avoid learning new software. It is one of the several reasons I won’t touch Vista.
I used to read the manual as needed. Since I could browse it by flipping pages, this was pretty effective. Back in the day, I wrote some moderately elaborate programs to run under MS-DOS, but that is hopeless under windows.
I guess if I had to learn something like Photoshop, I would go to a bookstore and get one or two books on the subject.
The importance of written materials is illustrated by the fact that when I use software I wrote myself (a diagram package for the markup language TeX), I regularly have to look things up in the manual.
If you are trying to learn the software in general, I recommend buying a 3rd-party guide. Read Amazon reviews and look them over in the store to see which one matches your style and is highly rated. These books tend to have well-organized overviews of the software, an emphasis on easy ways to get things done, troubleshooting tips (when anything by the maker of the software will be like “Trouble? What’s trouble?”), and serve as a resource after you have the basics down.
If I’m just trying to figure out how to use new software to accomplish a specific task, I usually get by with the help, or random stuff from Google.
This is how I did it. Pick a project that you have a true interest in, not just something generic that feels like homework. You will find yourself much more motivated to explore the software’s abilities and to do research to find out how to achieve different effects if you are working on something that inspires you.
For example, I’m a teacher and I take lots of pictures and make slideshows for a student group I sponsor. So one year I made a fun, goofy slideshow where I substituted the kids’ faces and names into old movie posters in place of the original actors. It was quite a challenge for me to make each new face look like it belonged on the original poster. Getting the contrast, saturation, graininess, and a dozen other things to match just right forced me to learn a lot of different tricks. I spent a lot more time on it than I had intended, but I got really into trying to perfect my techniques on each image. I had a lot of fun making that project.
If I needed help figuring out how to achieve a certain effect, I would do an internet seach and usually find good information. I also had a “Dummies” guide that I used to look up specific things.
For most Adobe stuff there are a ton of books out there. When I first learned Photoshop (in the version 2 days, 1993 or so I think), it came with a pretty good printed tutorial in the manual. These days, I’d probably get one of the Classroom in a Books. I’ve leafed through a few of them and they seemed pretty good. I don’t know if there’s one for Elements, but I’d guess there probably is.
I press all the buttons until I figure it out. If it doesn’t work in any way that makes intuitive sense, then I try a competing program.
This is why I use Corel PhotoPaint rather than Adobe Photoshop. They have practically the same capabilities (though there’s more addons for the latter), but PhotoPaint works in a way that makes sense. I don’t know why Photoshop became the defacto standard given that they’ve both been out for decades now.
Missed the edit window. Probably the reason is that Corel focused on Windows machines, but most artists used Macs, and now they’re stuck with legacy files.
I just start messing with it. I might go to an online tutorial, FAQ, and so on. Then I just google around when things come up that aren’t handled well in the help (which seems to be most of the time). I read books on programming, but not on software.
If it’s for myself, I toy around with it; I’ll consult the manual on specific details if I need to.
If it’s for work, I start by toying around, go on by cursing whomever wrote the so-called manual and so-called tutorials, continue either by doing a systematic attack while writing my own manual (it’s what I did with SAP) or by buying the For Dummies (Access).
In either case, I don’t start using it unless I have a project, and I don’t care whether I’m using the program to its fullest so long as I’m able to do what I need.
I once taught a course in learning applications (not learning an application but general strategies for learning apps in general).
The number one thing you can do to learn a piece of software is…use it. Why did you purchase the software to begin with? Was it to edit photos? Pull one out and start working away. Get stuck? Poke around for a bit (save first, of course). Still stuck? Ask the online help (or better these days Google the app and what you are trying to do).
Knowing how to do something is great. Knowing how to figure out how to do something means your potential is limitless.
Buy a used college textbook and read through it, doing the exercises at the end of each chapter. That’s pretty much what you have to do for most online classes. You can get used textbooks pretty cheap online.
Another approach is get a “…For Dummies” book. It’s been a while since I picked one of these up, but as I recall they do a pretty good job of teaching you the basics and/or the more advanced elements, depending on your experience level. They’re pretty well organized, with boxes containing tips and extra information. Probably cheaper than a college textbook too. Look online (maybe ebay) or any bookstore, maybe some college bookstores.
Yet another idea is to look online for information. In my experience this approach is best used if you need specific information. Photoshop is popular enough that there should be a ton of resources online, the problem is that in most cases it’s not going to be very well organized, and most of it is going to be people asking for answers to specific questions rather than organized tutorials.
Start by messing with everything. Play with different combinations of stuff. You can’t break it, just see what it does and explore.
After you’ve had your fill, if you’re going to learn some software, don’t start from the top down, learn from the bottom up by learning the software’s philosophy first. And by philosophy, I mean, try and get an understanding of how the software does what it does. The tools are just implements for manipulating that core philosophy.
So, as an example, let’s take PhotoShop.
Understand what a pixel is, and how PS goes about interacting with them. Learn how to pick them up and move them around. Learn what resolution is, the importance of how many of these pixels there are in an inch. Learn about anti-aliasing. Layering. Transparency. Masks. Alpha Channels. Blending Modes.
If you understand these core principles, then it’s just a matter of “What tool(s) will allow me to accomplish this the easiest, or best way?”. You start to get a feel for how a program thinks. Then it’s just a matter of thinking like it. Before you know it, it becomes second nature.
I use myriad applications, and I’m all self-taught. Some are far more complicated than others and have taken me many years to master, others I just seem to get, and can almost be productive with it immediately. PhotoShop just always seemed to click for me. YMMV.
This is how I learned Photoshop, way back in the late 80s: I was working in a place as a typesetter. The owner got some work retouching photographs, and he was too stupid to realize he didn’t have anyone who had ever done that. He knew I had a background in art, so just assumed I knew how to retouch photos in Photoshop. I had never even heard of Photoshop, had never worked on a Mac, had never operated a scanner, and had never handled a mouse. Not only that, but everything we had was black-market, and there were no manuals. So I just sat down at the Mac, and learned how to do everything by trial and error. Lots of trial, and lots of error.
Somehow I got the photos retouched. At my next job, I learned the “right” way to do everything.
To this day the only way I can learn is just by doing work in the application. But it’s nice to have a manual to refer to when I get stuck.
Open [Software Box]
Install [Application]
Launch
If [not (SelfExplanatory)]
… Loop
… If [not (Mastery=“Necessary”]
… Delete [Application (no dialog)]
… Delete [Software Box (no dialog)]
… Else If [not IsOpen (Software Manual)]
… Open [Software Manual]
… Else
… Reconsider [Evaluate (Mastery = “Necessary”)]
… End If
… End Loop
End If