10 Must Know Photoshop Skills for Beginner to Become Intermediate Users

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Photo is something very special and precious one. We capture some beautiful moments and emotions in photo. People call photographers in special occasions to make it more special and capture the special events special moments. It’s natural that we always love to remember special events and some beautiful smiley and happy days of our life.

Still everyone could not be photographers. Photography is an art and a passion. Every one could not be expert in photography. Photography is not like other professions. It needs special talent and skill to make the moment more enjoyable and more happening. Now a day’s youngsters choose photography field and take it as a passion. It needs extra talent and skill to understand the photographic angle and the photographic tools and techniques.

After the new invention of Photoshop, the photographers got a new way and new technique to make their photo and image more beautiful and more attractive. Photoshop brought new version of photography and gave a new image and made a simple picture to more attractive and different. Photoshop is a instrument, not a support. A bad photo is a bad photo it can’t be made good by editing or by doing extra processing or adjustments. But by overusing Photoshop and editing a good photo will be turning to bad. So we have to be very careful while using Photoshop.

By using Photoshop neatly and carefully we can make a photo more attractive and photographers must know basic techniques of using Photoshop. Photoshop makes your most excellent photo into a remarkable masterpiece. There are essential skills that photographers must know and they should adopt those skills in their photos.

Use of brush

In Photoshop brush is an elementary and foundational tool. It’s not easy to use it has its own way and method. A perfect photographer must know how to use the brush in Photoshop. If he understands that the photographer will be able to understand the related tools. There is fundamental equipment beginners should learn about the brush tool.

The photographer must know how to use a different brush and when which brush should be used. There is also an adjustment in brush size. So the photographer must understand the usage of brush in a different size. Not only that, those beginners are not able to understand the brush dullness. So he must understand the brush cloudiness and brush flow.

Tool selection

In Photoshop there is a number of ways to select tools. Some are simple and some are a complicated one. There are two selection tools which every beginner photographer must know. The marquee tool and another is lasso tool.

The marquee tool gives you the option of different shapes and size by selecting the particular size you have to do work or edit in that size. Lasso tool is a freehand tool. You have to draw the area which you want to work it out. It has no limitation of size and shape. Selection of particular area helps you to work within a specific area without affecting other parts of the image. It’s up to you which one you want to select and which will make your photo more attractive.

Using filter tool

Some photographers rarely use the filter tool in Photoshop. But every beginner should have the knowledge about filtering in Photoshop then only he can understand the basics of Photoshop. Pick an image and use your techniques of filtering in it. Then you will be able to understand the real use of filtering in Photoshop.

Vignette technique

Vignette is technique basically used to high light the real picture in the frame. Without diverting your mind you can focus on the picture. It’s basically darkening and giving extra blackish colour to the edge of the frame so that you can concentrate on the subject. As a result of the vignette, there will be a dark shade around the subject.

Sharpening the picture

It’s another tool in Photoshop that every beginner must be aware of. In its word itself, we can get the idea that it’s used to make the picture sharper and more detailed. I will suggest using this tool while photo shopping your image but never use it too much. When you make the picture more detailed may be at one point it will lose the attribute of attraction so photographers must use it but for limited.

Brightening and contrast

It’s another very important tool in Photoshop. It’s very easy to make an adjustment so one must be very careful by using it. We have to apply them very carefully. When the photo session was done in Light room the photographer must use brightening tool to make it clearer and adjust it to correct flow of exposure. One must be very care full while using brightening and contrasting tool because it goes hand in hand. It must complement each other.

Curves and level

Curves and level tools are one of the advanced approaches of brightening and contrasting tool. We use brightening and contrast tool in Photoshop at the same time Photoshop gives another tool called curves and levels its use also the same but we can same that it’s somewhat more advanced than other. It makes subject targeted. It’s not easy to use at first but later you will use it and you can handle it easily and you will wonder about its result.

Photoshop content aware fill

It’s very useful and very advanced tool in Photoshop. By using this tool you can make your picture more attractive and beautiful. You can avoid the unwanted area by selecting from the frame and delete it. You just select an unwanted area from the frame and apply this tool. This tool carefully reads the frame and without much effort removes the selected area.

Colour balancing tool

Colour balancing tool always helps you to look into your picture from a different angle. Colour balancing helps you to understand how the existing colours interact or complement each other. Colour is the very important part which you can try while ornament ling your photographs.

Cropping tool

The cropping tool is easy to apply and its use must be known to the photographers while they are photo shopping. It helps the photographer to drag the photo and select it as he wants. It gives a more accurate look at your image and helps to focus on your subject matter.

So these are some Photoshop skills which every beginner photographers should adopt in their picture. Some are easy to handle and some are difficult in the beginning later on you can use it. It’s all about new creativity and new thoughts.

How to Improve Your Photoshop Skills with Photoshop Week

Photoshop Week is an extra exciting time, but with so many courses and events, it can be helpful to have a game plan to ensure you get the most from all the courses and instructors. Here are 5 tips to help you come away with basic Photoshop skills and more.

Embrace the Mess

What’s your creative process? How do your methods transfer to Photoshop? Do you have a direct or flawless approach to get from point A to B?

Social media can sometimes make it appear like everyone else has a process in place. Looking at completed project after project, you might feel like you’re the only one who works in circles, tries things that don’t work and makes more than one occasional u-turn.

The creative process is a messy one, both figuratively and literally. But somehow, we think of this mess as a weakness — a fault — or some sort of sign that we don’t know what we’re doing or that we’re not “there” yet.

Watching polished presentations by veteran instructors might exaggerate this feeling, too. How do they always dial in the exact blend mode, pixel radius, or tool setting to achieve their out-of-this-world results? How on Earth do they know all of those things so reliably and with such seemingly little effort?

Here’s the big secret. (Shhh!) It’s all about not being afraid to make a mess. To experiment. To try things that (likely) won’t work. The more you keep trying the things that ultimately fail, the closer you get to figuring out the things that succeed. And the more you do this, the better you get at guessing, and the shorter and slightly less messy your path from A to B gets. (Though, don’t kid yourself, it will always still be messy…)

As instructors, we’ve simply gotten better at guessing through years of trial and error—and that’s something anyone can do. It starts with embracing the mess. This will quickly improve basic Photoshop skills.

Join Khara Plicanic to learn the fundamentals of Photoshop and start creating your own professional quality photos! Learn More.

How to Improve Your Photoshop Skills

Like anything else, it’s easy to fall into a certain way of using Photoshop to do the same type of tasks over and over again. People can work in Photoshop daily for 10 years, and still have very basic Photoshop skills.

Photoshop is a vast program for everything from forensic analysis to commercial retouching. Even if you use it primarily for family portrait photography, you never know what ideas and connections might come from watching a course about typography or HDR.

If creativity is about seeing and making connections, then stepping out of your box should be considered a job requirement. Take advantage of Photoshop Week to learn basic Photoshop skills and inspiration from a variety of course topics—especially the ones you have little interest in—and see what new ideas come your way.

Don’t Be Exclusive

The more you learn, the more you realize that no two people use Photoshop the exact same way. That means there’s endless opportunity for discovery (and inspiration) during Photoshop Week.

Even if you think you know everything there is to know about layers and blend modes, learning how someone else applies that knowledge can spark new ideas and insights.

It can be especially useful during Photoshop Week to make an extra effort to check out courses by instructors you might otherwise overlook. It might just spark a new idea or give you a time-saving tip that unlocks a whole new world.

Get Out of the Weeds

Would you rather have a solid understanding of the concepts that make Photoshop sing or mindlessly use tools over and over again?

If you’re feverishly stressing about memorizing steps and instructions instead of understanding concepts—you’re in the weeds.

Stop and ask yourself why the instructor is doing something a particular way. Ask yourself what would happen if you tried it a different way.

Photoshop is nothing if not the ultimate “Choose Your Own Adventure” ride, as there are always five or more ways to achieve any effect. Naturally, each method has their own advantages and disadvantages, but if you don’t internalize and master the basic concepts, Photoshop will swallow you whole.

Ride Your Bike

Just like you can’t learn to ride a bike without actually getting on a bike, it’s impossible to learn basic Photoshop skills without practicing.

It’s important to watch Photoshop Week courses and make use of included course files, but it’s equally imperative to apply what you’ve learned in a different context. Recreate a similar project for a friend or try taking a concept you learned in another direction to flex those Photoshop muscles.

Repeat

Photoshop isn’t something you learn and then are “done” learning. It’s always changing, as are industry standards and trends. So when you think about it, we’re all still learning basic Photoshop skills.

As daunting as that can seem when you’re at the very beginning of your adventure, the good news is, as long as you’re a Photoshop enthusiast—you’ll never be bored. So keep moving forward and the fun will never end.

Basic Photoshop Skills Every Photographer Needs to Master

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Photoshop is often the first choice for photographers who want to edit their photos. It has been around for years and has lots of useful functions. But if you’re new to photography or photo editing, you might not have a clue where to start. It can look pretty complicated if you look at the software without knowing what’s what. When you first get started, you only need to worry about the basic skills. Once you have them down, you can start moving onto more complicated skills. Before you begin trying to do anything like that, make sure you master these basics.

Cropping

Cropping images might seem like the most basic of core competencies. However, in Photoshop, it can seem more sophisticated than in many other programs. You have a couple of options for how to crop your images. You can do it the traditional way, where the image stays static, and you bring in the sides of the frame. Photoshop also allows you to move the image around so that you can position it exactly where you want within a set frame. You can also preset different sizes and resolutions, so they’re ready to go at any moment.

Brightness and Contrast

Adjusting the brightness and contrast of your images is also an important skill to have. It’s something you have to be delicate with because a wrong move can make everything go wrong. Luckily, there’s always the opportunity to undo what you just did. Before you start fiddling with slides yourself, try using the “auto” button first. It will try to guess at how to adjust your image so that the brightness and contrast are balanced. If you’re not happy with the results, try moving the sliders up and down to see what you can do. Practice makes perfect with this tool.

Layers

Using layers can help you to have more control over your editing process. Instead of making sweeping changes to your photos, you can layer it to make your edits more targeted. It also means that each time you make an edit, it’s only one layer and not the entire photo. You can change the opacity of a layer and use blending to concentrate on one area. Getting to grips with this function could take you a while. But once you learn to do it, you’ll have much better control over how your photos turn out.

Cloning and Healing

Photoshopping often involves getting rid of bits of your photo that you don’t want. It could be a mark, some frizzy hair, or a blemish on someone’s face. When you do this, you need to be able to remove it without leaving a hole or an obviously photoshopped patch. Cloning and Healing allow you to do this. You use these tools to blend the spots where you make changes. You can use the cloning tool to sample bits of the photos and replace other parts. The healing brush uses pixels surrounding the bit you want to edit.

These skills are essential to learn if you’re a photographer, and there are several more. Don’t forget to learn the basics before trying the harder stuff.