Question:
What is the best way to learn Photoshop?

Answer:
Short answer: There is not one 'best way'.

Many people are daunted by trying to learn Photoshop. There are hundreds of
tools and
infinite possibilities. Infinite. You can pick an image and do anything with
it...even create
an entirely different scene. But the point of working with images would seem to
be to
improve what you have taken, and not to turn a picture of a cat into an elephant
(by
applying the "turn this into an Elephant" filter, of course!). Most people will
not expect to
accomplish such transmogrification, and what would be the point when you could
make
the result simpler with a visit to the local zoo?

One of the reasons users find Photoshop daunting is that they try to learn too
much—or
even all of it—at once. A better approach for most people will be to learn
a-tool-at-a-
time. Pick a tool, read about the tool in Photoshop or Elements Help (press
Command+/ or
Ctrl+/ [mac/pc]), then open an image and explore the tool by applying it. Don't
look so
much for expert results as the opportunity to learn how the tool behaves. That
experience
will go a long way toward incorporating it into your workflow. 15 or 20 minutes
a day puts
a new tool into your belt.

Further, and following this line of logic, you can limit the tools you look at
to only those
that are more practical for what you want to do. If you will be working with
digital
photographs for the sake of editing and improving them, you can virtually ignore
whole
sets of tools, and in the case of Photoshop, an entire application (Image
Ready). in my
courses and books I have a list of 30 or so core functions and tools that you
can pretty
much expect to incorporate into your work with any image. Some of these are
terribly
obvious, like Open and Save, but you quickly get into the heart of a tool set
that helps you
stay focused on correction and the task at hand. People hem and haw about Curves
and
how important they are to correction, and honestly I think they are a bit of a
hack the way
it is often described to use them, and at this point in my editing I rarely use
them at all.
Levels are a far more accurate and useful tool, except in specific
circumstances. But the
point is that with a significantly limited set of tools, you can accomplish what
you need to
in editing almost any image...as long as you know which to use.

That said, some people will find books most helpful, some DVDs, some online
courses,
some live seminars, a rare few personalized instruction, and others just poking
about in
the program. Having learned Photoshop at a time where there were no books or
tutorials, I
would suggest that poking around can be effective, but it is likely to be the
slowest
method of learning unless you already have a lot of digital imaging experience
with
another program. Any one of the products that help you learn Photoshop will
likely cut
months and years off learning. Here are a few things that will help:

1. Get acquainted with the interface. Learn about palettes and menus and where
the tools
are stored. ( See my Photoshop 101 course on betterphoto.com for an outline).

2. Have a goal in mind when opening Photoshop rather than just hoping it will do
something for you or that you will suddenly feel inspired. Do you want to
improve images
from a recent shoot? Learn color correction? create a new logo? The answer to
the question
"what do I want to do?" will give you direction and save time.

3. Take a note from your own learning history and follow the path that has been
most
successful for you in other endeavors. If you have been successful learning in a
classroom,
take a course; if you learn from books, take a look at the books in a local
store and see
what looks most interesting to you.

4. Don't expect to be an expert overnight. Personally I have been using
Photoshop daily for
about 15 years. I learn something new every day. It could be about the program,
about my
images, about seeing, composition, settings, whatever...but there is always
something new
in thee program as long as I allow myself to see it. Becoming an expert will
likely take
months or years.

5. Establish a base workflow, including a solid color management setup, good
step-by-
step correction practices, and test your output. You will be following a similar
set of steps
for most images unless you will be doing a lot of work to them. Outline your
process or
borrow someone elses (see my Workflow course on betterphoto.com).

6. Experiment with limitations. Don't give your self open-ended amounts of time
to try
and achieve an effect by applying filters willy-nilly. Again, have an idea of
what you want
to achieve, and allow yourself 10-15 minutes to experiment with a result rather
than
running all over with it. At the end of the time, post the image to a Photoshop
forum
somewhere and ask for help in what you want to achieve. Try my forums found
through
http://hiddenelements.com

I hope that helps people get on track toward learning Photoshop in their own
way. If you
have questions feel free to send them for future editions of the blog. Send to
Richard
Lynch thebookdoc@...