New to photoshop

gstaska · Feb 16, 2014

I am a total amateur who is self taught. I have light room 5 and have just scratched the surface on using it. I did just subscribe to adobe for the 9.00 a month deal for photoshop. What is the best way to figure it out besides playing with it? Especially doing layers!

Designer · Feb 16, 2014

There are lots of tutorial videos online.

weepete · Feb 16, 2014

YouTube and online tutorials, Adobe does some on their website too. I've also got a couple of reference books that I'll use if I can't find what I want.

Derrel · Feb 16, 2014

Books have the advantage of allowing you to easily "go back" and re-acquaint yourself with early steps in long, drawn-out processes. There are many tutorials, but a lot of them assume knowledge not in evidence, if you get my drift. Keep plugging away at it. A various times there will be an "Ahah!" moment, here and there, rare at first, but growing more frequent. Rome = not built in one day.

KmH · Feb 16, 2014

With either LR 5 or Photoshop CC open press your keyboard F1 key.

LR 5 will take you here : https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/topics.html
Photoshop CC will take you here : https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/topics.html

I recommend you first get familiar with the workspace layouts:
LR - https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/workspace-basics.html
CC - https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/workspace-basics.html

You can also visit - Adobe TV
Lightroom Killer Tips | Lightroom Presets, Videos, Tips and News
Adobe Community: Home

For more in-depth reference I recommend these 2 books:
The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers
Adobe Photoshop CC for Photographers: A professional image editor's guide to the creative use of Photoshop for the Macintosh and PC

CCericola · Feb 16, 2014

I second Derrel with the book idea. You can flip back and forth. Finding the right book can be daunting though. You have to decide what you want to use Photoshop for. I assume photography because you are in a photo forum. So you want to find books geared toward photography. Photoshop is a powerful program used by illustrators, photographers, graphic designers, web designer, etc... the list goes on and on. There will be a lot of tools a photographer will never use.

I really haven't cracked a photoshop book since CS came out so I don't know what is out there currently but I do have this book and it was useful : Amazon.com: The Adobe Photoshop CS Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter) eBook: Scott Kelby: Kindle Store

KmH · Feb 16, 2014

It takes more than just 1 book.
A big advantage of books is having a lot of information gathered together in one place and in a logical sequence.
Relying on video tutorials makes you jump around in a piecemeal, disconnected progression that can leave huge gaps in your knowledge.

Scott Kelby's books are collections of tutorials, and he leaves out a lot of information about the various tools, features, and functions Photoshop has available.

Photoshop CC includes a couple of plug-ins - Camera Raw and Bridge.
Lightroom's Develop module is Camera Raw.

So some other useful books are:
The Digital Negative: Raw Image Processing in Lightroom, Camera Raw, and Photoshop
Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom (2nd Edition)
The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers
The Digital Print: Preparing Images in Lightroom and Photoshop for Printing

Tailgunner · Feb 16, 2014

gstaska said:
I am a total amateur who is self taught. I have light room 5 and have just scratched the surface on using it. I did just subscribe to adobe for the 9.00 a month deal for photoshop. What is the best way to figure it out besides playing with it? Especially doing layers!

Books and online tutorials.

Rome wasn't created in a day like Darrel mentioned, so don't get frustrated. I bought Photoshop's Layers by Matt Kloskowski and watched several online youtube videos. Just take one tool at a time and learn to use it well.

usernut · Feb 27, 2014

adobe photoshop cs6 classroom in a book, I started it a few days ago and have learned more than I have in the last year of messing with photoshop myself. it gives easy lessons and explains everything simply. available online as a pdf, just make sure you get the lessons files with it.

webestang64 · Feb 27, 2014

KmH said:
With either LR 5 or Photoshop CC open press your keyboard F1 key.

LR 5 will take you here : https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/topics.html
Photoshop CC will take you here : https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/topics.html

I recommend you first get familiar with the workspace layouts:
LR - https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/workspace-basics.html
CC - https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/workspace-basics.html

You can also visit - Adobe TV
Lightroom Killer Tips | Lightroom Presets, Videos, Tips and News
Adobe Community: Home

For more in-depth reference I recommend these 2 books:
The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers
Adobe Photoshop CC for Photographers: A professional image editor's guide to the creative use of Photoshop for the Macintosh and PC

I really like those books by Martin Evening! I have used his books for every version of PS I have used. I'm self taught as well and work as a professional retouch artist.