iLoveToBeFAB: Learn Photoshop on your own....(free & in less than 90 days)

"Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow."

Anthony J. D'Angelo

Three months ago I decided to start studying Photoshop on my own. And although, I am definitely not an expert right now, I can really say I learned a lot and I can now use Photoshop CS6 pretty well for the short time I have practiced working with it. So here is a guide based on my personal experience for all those people out there who would like to learn Photoshop at home, without necessarily spending a lot of money on courses' fees and software. I think the success of this guide lies in my learning method which I have perfected through years and years of studying both at school and on my own. Whether or not you can learn Photoshop in 3 months will depend on how fast you can learn and also how much time you have available. Below are the answers to some of the questions you might be asking yourself.....So keep reading!

WHAT IS PHOTOSHOP USED FOR?
Photoshop is great to use to editing your images. You can correct them, enhance them; you can also make photo montages; you can extract certain parts of an image to use them into documents; you can use Photoshop for creative texts, as well as for all images used in brochures, fliers, posters, articles and other PR and marketing material. Photoshop can also be used to make fliers, posters, menus, vouchers, web banners and many other PR material. So Photoshop is a great tool to use both at home and at work!

WHICH TOOLS WILL I NEED?

A Photoshop book

A notebook, a pen and a ruler (+ any other stationery you might like to use to take notes)

A computer

Photoshop CS6 (you can download a 30 days trial from adobe.com)

HOW OFTEN SHOULD I STUDY?

In my case, because I am not working at this moment, I was able to study between 5 to 6 times a week for about 1 to 1.5 hours each time for the first 2 months (theory months) and between 2 and 4 hours a day for the last month which was my practice month. If this schedule is not feasible for you, do not worry and just set a different one which meets your daily life routine.

WHICH BOOK SHOULD I USE?
Photographer's Guide to Photoshop

Although I am sure that you can many great Photoshop products out there, I was lucky enough to find a great book for beginners at my local library. So I have been using this free of charge for the past 3 months. The book I am talking about is The Photographer's Guide to Photoshop by Barrie Thomas. This book really starts from the basics and its explanations are perfect for those of you, who like me, had no clue about Photoshop before starting this learning journey. Each chapter is short, the font is not too small, and the pages are full of images which make learning more interesting and also easier. The author also presents various examples.

HOW SHOULD I STUDY?

The method I use to study Photoshop and which worked great for me consisted of reading each chapter at least twice and sometimes even three times and then writing a summary in my notebook of each chapter which helped me put into my words what I had learned from that single chapter. These notes also worked great for me when I came to revise the book and practice on the actual software program. I tried to do one chapter each day I studied. Those chapters which were either longer or more complex I divided them into two different days. Below is the detailed schedule I followed to study this book.

THEORY SCHEDULE

Part 1

Day 1: Chapter 1 Day 2: Chapter 2 Day 3: Chapter 3

Day 4 & 5: Chapter 4 Day 6: Chapter 5 Day 7: Chapter 6

Day 8: Chapter 7 Day 9 & 10: Chapter 8

Part 2

Day 11: Chapter 9 Day 12: Chapter 10 Day 13: Chapter 11

Day 14: Chapter 12 Day 15: Chapter 13 Day 16: Chapter 14

Day 17: Chapter 15 Day 18: Chapter 16

Part 3

Day 19: Chapter 17 Day 20: Chapter 18 Day 21: Chapter 19

Day 22: Chapter 20 Day 23: Chapter 21

Part 4

Day 24: Chapter 22 Day 25: Chapter 23 Day 26: Chapter 24

Day 27: Chapter 25 Day 28: Chapter 26 Day 29: Chapter 27

Day 30: Chapter 28

In the schedule above the days refer to each time I decided to study and not consecutive days on the calendar. In fact Day 1 was the 16/10/2012 and Day 30 was 1/12/2012. So it actually took me 45 days to study the entire book because I skipped 15 days in between the various study days.

After those 45 days during which I studied the book, I spent the next 19 days practicing each chapter from the book on the actual software. Out of these 19 days I actually practiced 16 days and took 3 days break here and there. Below is the schedule I followed to practice.

PRACTICE SCHEDULE

Day 31: Practice Chapter 1 to 5 Day 32: Practice Chapter 6 to 8

Day 33: Practice Chapter 9 Day 34: Practice Chapter 10

Day 35: Practice Chapter 11 Day 36: Practice Chapter 12

Day 37: Practice Chapter 13 & 14 Day 38: Practice Chapter 15 & 16

Day 39: Practice Chapter 17 Day 40: Practice Chapter 18

Day 41: Practice Chapter 20 Day 42: Practice Chapter 21 & 22

Day 43: Practice Chapter 23 & 24 Day 44: Practice Chapter 25 & 26

Day 45: Practice Chapter 27 & 28

During my practice days I started by quickly revising the chapter summary on my notebook and then trying out the various tools and techniques involved in each chapter on the program using photos I had saved on my laptop as well as images found on the Internet.

MORE PRACTICE (from http://mrdolinski.weebly.com/photoshop.html)

To make use of the last 10 days of the Photoshop CS6 30 days Trial, I found a great website with many challenging, interesting and also fun tutorials and examples which can be used to study as well as for practicing. These are also great to follow when you have similar work to do and need some guide.

Here are the tutorials I worked with. I tried about 6 Creative Text tutorials, the bobble head tutorial as well as the changing hair colour one. I also practice with the following tutorials: airbrushing skin, beautify a face, reducing 5 o' clock shadows and bear stubble, enhance skin, aging people, digital nose job, make your amateur photos more professional, improving landscape photographs, understanding local contract enhancement, using the Photoshop levels tool, using the Photoshop curves tool, image retouching: advanced skin softening.

So in reality, it took me only 60 days to study and practice, but counting the days I skipped in between each study and practice day 85 days passed from the first day I started the book to the last day of the Photoshop trial.

WHERE CAN I DOWNLOAD PHOTOSHOP CS6?

You can download it from adobe.com by creating a Creative Cloud account for which you need to also have an Apple ID.

Below is some work I have done with Photoshop during the first part of my practice period. During the past week I have been working on fliers, posters, vouchers, menus and other PR material. I will be posting a separate article featuring these examples with few tips on how to make them using Photoshop.