Focus on Fundamentals: Recommendations for Photoshop Training

> I've been involved in photography for many years.
> I've been shooting digital, but it's time to learn
> Photoshop. Can you recommend a good training or tutoring
> program, CD, book or DVD?

That question leaves the door wide-open to plugging my own wares, but I think it would be more useful to step back and think about what you are really looking for as a serious beginner trying to learn Photoshop or even Elements.

As a beginner, you want to get to understanding what you are doing with Photoshop and get up to speed by the quickest path possible. The desire to get things done quickly and make leaps in progress is an attractive goal, and because it is what users think they want, it drives the market for learning materials that are created. That has led to an abundance of learning resources that promise to make it easy, yet a dearth of good information. Materials that want to win the reader as a friend and up painting a rosy picture, fill out the content with fluff and humor that are easy to read, trumpeting how easy it is to improve your images. Ultimately, these soft texts and programs offer very little but a handful of quick tips, a few sloppy tricks, deflated wow and the failed promise of learning it all fast.

Regretfully, you'll find that just about all of this advertising is a gimmick. Titles like "Learn Photoshop in a Day" lure in readers with a promise, reveal the 'gimmick' ("...using 24 one-hour lessons!"), and then fail to provide anything of real substance. On the other hand, titles like "Suffering for Photoshop" or "Difficult Methods for Pretty Pictures" won't tend to attract readers, and optimally the hope is that Photoshop should be easy to learn. But the whole premise of learning something as complex as Photoshop in such a small amount of time is absurd. If you are learning a lighter mood may make you comfortable in the new terrain, but what you don't need are materials that are entertaining (presentation without substance), materials that just repeat the Help menu, materials you can get for free if you poked around the internet, and materials that ultimately leave you with no sense of what to do with your images -- and fail to give you a good idea how to work with images intelligently and safely. "Just trust me" is a favored line, for example, of one well-know Photoshop author when it comes to color management suggestions, and the somewhat sour advice offered routinely causes more problems than it cures. It is quick and easy, but ultimately harmful and wrong.

From my perspective, the best place to start as a beginner is with solid fundamentals:

* An introduction to navigating the interface and setup (including some basics of color management)
* A plan for handling images once they come off the camera (proper ideas of file types, sizing, and storage)
* A background on the tools you need to work with day-to-day
* A plan for working with every image you encounter
* An idea of what you want to accomplish

This may not be the most exciting list if you need to experience learning like it is a carnival ride, but it is terribly practical and gives you a solid foundation to build on and expand from. Know where to find tools and navigate and you will have a sense of comfort. Handle images correctly and you can experiment and learn without causing your source images harm and store them safely and efficiently. Find out what tools to use every day will help you avoid those that can cause damage to your images while using those that are most efficient. Define an outline to follow and you take decided steps forward rather than ambling randomly from one technique to the next experimenting and wasting time hoping something fabulous happens during click-and-pray. Practical, refined methodology yields the best and most consistent results.

Resources for learning are numerous. Some people will learn best from books or DVDs or even online courses and tutorials. I would suggest that you take a wide approach and use a variety of resources. First, don't neglect Adobe's Help. It is a great free resource for learning about individual functions and features and how to apply them that comes with the program. Tutorials online are hit-or-miss depending on the source, and many of them contain information that is harmful to your images -- take them all with a grain of salt. You'll have to weed through them. But truth be told many of those same harmful techniques were duplicated from the all-too-common Books and DVDs that contain unfortunatate misunderstandings and misinformation, and were compiled by marketers or other opportunists who saw the huge market for Photoshop and image editing training. That is, many materials are compiled by professional trainers and professional writers rather than people with real day-to-day experience in image editing.

Online courses come in many types...from those that have lessons sent out without any ability to interact with the instructors to those that offer full access to industry experts (see betterphoto.com). Of course those range in price accordingly. The advantage of the latter is being able to actually interact with the expert teaching the course (rather than just having their picture on it) and get explanations and answers to your questions. In this day, even books and DVDs have the opportunity to offer online areas for Q&A, and very few do. I think readers should have access to authors (as I have offered for all my books since the first one), and those who don't offer that are essentially refusing to support their materials. (see my open forum for my new layers book: http://photoshopcs.com/forum)

Some disagree that you should ever need training, and that the best method for learning Photoshop is to simply get in and play. That is valiant, and if you have infinite time, this may be a viable option. If you can't afford books, DVDs or other training, then it certainly makes sense. But as the only resource of learning, unguided exploration of such a vast program is penny wise and pound foolish. Why learn about tools you won't ever need for image editing? Why waste time learning to apply features that harm your images? And how do you grow to understand the theory behind the tools by just the click-and-pray method of discovery? It will be hugely time consuming and very costly in its own right. Having been one who learned Photoshop when there were no books, and no experts, it took many times longer than it could have to get up to speed. These days there is the opportunity to ride on the experience of those who have spent time figuring out what is really important. There is something to be said of apprenticeship in learning any trade. Making an investment in formal materials should at least supplement any 'learn as the wind blows' mentality if images and image editing are important to you. I do think you will retain a lot more by jumping in and experiencing the pain of learning...but I also think base fundamentals can stop you from getting burned.

Focus on fundamentals from the outset rather than tips, tricks and 'wow' can form a net of safety for your experimentation. For example, I had a self-taught student that thought they knew a lot about Photoshop, and found out in my course that her routine for the past 3 years of image editing had been systematically ruining her images. She resized all images smaller and saved as JPEG to save space as soon as the images came off the camera, and resaved over the originals when she edited. That original source for her vacations, memories and other photography had been compromised, and potential detail permanently lost. It is not simply wasting time at that point, but obliteration of years of photographic work -- as sad as losing photos on a crashed drive, and with no options to even do it all over again. The student's predicament was a tragedy, but there was no way to reverse it...and she is not the only one. It could have been different had she learned her fundamentals first.

Puttering has its place and is very important to learning, exploring, and confidence...but it is a single avenue that can also lead to misconception and disaster. Certain practical, fundamental things are just not intuitive and learning to deal with them can save hundreds of hours of frustration, or even catastrophic loss. Whatever the source you use to get off on the right foot, exploring and experimentation is best done in concert with learning fundamentals.

I hope that helps!

Richard Lynch

The Adobe Photoshop Layers Book for CS4 was just released in mid-March ('09)! Get it on Amazon: http://aps8.com/taplbcs4.html. The book has 60 new pages of material, including a section on making manual HDR conversion the layers way. All of the exercises and materials have been reviewed and updated. That said, techniques aim at being timeless and accessible for many versions of Photoshop and Elements as well. This is a book for the serious-minded.

For those looking to learn Photoshop fundamentals, I teach a Photoshop 101 course at betterphoto.com recently updated for CS4 and Elements 7 (Photoshop 101: the Photoshop Essentials Primer). The course covers my outline of fundamentals from the bulleted list above and helps get you started enjoying and experiencing the program without the frustration and potential disasters. Betterphoto courses allow interaction with the instructor as well as other classmates.

The Psychology of Color Management and Calibration

The cliche experience that many have had is watching a family member trying to master the color on the family TV set. The people-centric medium of TV makes us to look at images where the color being off becomes unbearable and unnatural because skin tones just look wrong. We all know what skin tones should look like so we are compelled to change the screen to make the skin tones look as we expect. It's natural to trust that the color being broadcast to your TV is correct, only changing the settings on the TV can make it right. Hopeful TV color experts twiddle the controls trying to achieve a vague balance that only they can, while everyone else sits idly looking on hoping thing would be alright soon, impatient with the technology, wondering why it can't just be right in the first place -- or if adjusting it is the thing that is screwing it up.

People are more apt to assume that what they see on their computer monitor is accurate when they pull it out of the box. Monitors are not constantly replete with skin tones that remind us that something may be off, as you spend considerable time using it for other activities like checking email or word-processing, which has nothing to do with skin tones at all. When a digital photographer sees a face, it might more often be in Photoshop, where they just change the color with tools in the program offered for that type of control. Regretfully, changing the color and trusting what you see in Photoshop and on your monitor can lead to martian prints and web postings of people in your images, and a quandary: why should color that looks correct in one place be off or plain wrong in another.

The answer is Color Management.

As they say, a little knowledge can be dangerous. Knowing enough to adjust the color in Photoshop doesn't turn out to be enough to make the color right. While some will come to the conclusion that the poor results have something to do with color management, just what they need to do to work with color management is less clear. They may revert to familiar territory and seek out the computer's brightness, contrast and color controls figuring this is how they have to make adjustments fiddling like you might do with a TV. They might get close and even get lucky with this method, but generally nothing could be worse. Adjustments made with the monitor controls as a means of color management end up being a best guess at what everything should look like on screen, and a compromise much like the TV expert's attempts at balancing RGB with the primitive TV controls. Guessing is not a good approach to color.

Some may go a little further and read a few web postings that have to do with adjusting color on their monitor, and these will range from the incorrect to the absurdly simple to the horribly technical ones that you are not quite sure are written in English. Naturally, the TV-color-minded inclination that "it is just color, how complicated could it be..." pushes people more toward accepting the absurdly simple and incorrect approaches. Some may take it a step further to seek out help from an expert (who may be anyone from a well-respected authority in Photoshop or color management to a neighbor who knows "a bunch about computers"). Regretfully the better answers (like the book Real World Color Management by Fraser, Murphy and Bunting, a 500+ page book) may be long and involved and daunting from the outset. On the other hand, getting the color right doesn't require getting a college degree in the subject, and such extensive study may be unnecessary for common folk, who, after all, just want the right color.

Those who want the right color without the doctorate end up taking suggestions from friends or people on forums, or look for the 'right' way to set up their color management. Truth be told, there is not one right way: more than one method will work. In fact, any method of color management that makes sense will work...but the other side of the coin is: the same color management scheme just doesn't work for everyone, and some will work better than others. The best way to get the color right and pick an applicable color management scheme, is, in my opinion, understanding the shorthand version of what you want to achieve and applying the simplest steps possible to get there.

The basics of color management requires:

• Calibrating your monitor
• Creating an ICC profile (usually part of step 1)
• Setting up color management in Photoshop or Elements (and perhaps other programs) correctly
• Setting up previews/screen proofing that make sense (Photoshop, not Elements)
• Applying appropriate color tagging to your images

If you neglect any one of these, you are gambling with your color results, plain and simple. If you do a few and not the others, you are not necessarily any better off than doing none at all. More frustrating, if you don't do them all, things may work sometimes, and not others, and you'll never be able to tell why. But attack each of these components with the intent to know why they are important, how they apply, and how to apply them, and you'll have the skeleton of color management, which is enough to hang your color on. You get skin on your skeleton when you define the purpose of what you are trying to achieve. Do you print to the same printer all the time? Do you print to many? Do you post images to the web exclusively? Do you print and post? Do images all come from the same camera? Do you have many sources of images (multiple cameras, images from friends, clients, etc.)? All these questions filter into your color management choice.

This is not the first time I've mentioned color management in my blog, and it won't be the last. Here are some other Color Management entries:

• What Color Space Do I Use? (Part 1)
• What Color Space Do I Use (Part 2)
• Calibrating My Home Printer

These additional resources should give you some background on making better color management choices.

For more info on approaching color management seriously, I have a 4 week primer course at betterphoto.com called From Monitor to Print that will work you through these 5 essentials, and test your results, making you color competent in a short amount of time with the least amount of work. You'll want to look into good calibration tools like the ColorVision Spyder (by the way, I posted an article on 9.11.08 about using the ColorVision Spyder Express to calibrate a dual monitor system -- which the manufacturer says is impossible). You can also simplify your color life by finding a system and sticking to it (don't change printers, papers, profiles, inks, or services without a plan).

Competent color handling is more than just calibration, but don't get psyched out. Make the effort to know what to do, and you can put it safely behind you.

The Photoshop Options You Should Never Use

Amongst the plethora of screens and functions and the thousands and thousands of options that you have in Photoshop and Elements for correcting, changing and composing your images, there are some options, features and functions you should never use. It might seem inconceivable that Adobe would put options you shouldn’t use in the program, but they are there, and some of them are named to sound downright savory. These features lurk in the user interface, and users make the same mistakes over and over by using them. The features and functions that you shouldn’t use span every nook and cranny of the program, from opening your images, to correcting, through saving/printing. Users apply them again and again until they learn what these features and functions are and to avoid them because of the damage they do to their images.

The list of features is tremendously long spanning all versions of Photoshop and Elements. Instead of listing all the features, let me simplify the list by making a few generalizations:

• Don’t ever apply features just because they appear on a dialog and you feel obligated to move a slider or click a button.
  
• Don’t ever apply features that don’t improve your image or your vision for it.
  
• Don’t ever apply the features you have not experimented with enough to know how to apply with predictable results.

The crust of this biscuit is simply: don’t feel obligated to use features just because they appear on screen and in the program or ‘sound good’. What you should use are the features and functions (and buttons) that make sense, fit your workflow, and improve your images. Features that ‘make sense’ means that you know what the features do before you apply them to finish images, and not that you ‘click-and-pray’.

For example say you open the Levels dialog — which is an imperative tool for image correction. Once the dialog opens, you could click the Auto button. You could also click the White Point, Black Point and Gray balance eyedroppers and apply those — some tutorials may even suggest it. But, even if your image seems to improve on your screen, you may not be doing the image integrity any favors. The fact is that even brilliant features used incorrectly can run counter to what you really want to do for an image or even ruin it. It may be easy to go the fast way and click an Auto button, and it may produce pleasing results at a glance, but it can also compromise your images. And what is the biggest objection to applying things the right way? People want it quicker, and they will ultimately accept speed while sacrificing quality…For my images, it is unacceptable to sacrifice quality to save a few moments. It doesn’t make sense to spend lots of time to learn how to take the best pictures, lots of money to get good equipment, and toss away the quality of the images you captured because you can’t be bothered to spend time getting the corrections right.

Tools you shouldn’t use include those that might damage your images, as well as those you simply don’t know well enough to apply. That is, the list of tools you shouldn’t use is virtually different for every Photoshop user based on their level of experience and what they know. The list will change as you learn and gain experience with the program.

Regretfully learning the tools takes time. However, you can use your time learning more efficiently and cut time from experimentation and exploration. The first thing to do: make a short list of tools you know you should explore. Just start listing those you think you should know better. Don’t list more than 30. Make them tools that you think are important (you may find out otherwise). Next set aside a time — 15 or 20 minutes a day — to explore those features/functions. Plan to explore just one tool a day for as many days as there are tools on the list. To begin your exploration, learn the basics of any feature using the Help materials provided by Adobe. The information there will tell you the way the function was designed to perform and how to apply it. This is a useful starting point: you’ll find out how a feature is applied. Help will tell you little or nothing about the best way to use a feature. Reading up shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes.

Next try applying the feature/function on an image according to the instructions to see how it behaves in practice. Try to give it a workout using all the possibilities you can think of. Apply it to several different images. Spend between 10 and 15 minutes ‘playing’ with the tool. That should serve as your introduction, and you will probably learn a few things you didn’t know before. However, you’ve probably learned just enough to be dangerous…you may be able to apply the tool, but that may not tell you what it really does and why it works, and that can affect how you use it productively.

To learn proven techniques for the best way to apply features, may take a lot more effort, and sometimes weeks, months or even years of study, depending on the complexity of what you are trying to accomplish. It is the kind of time that not everyone can dedicate to learning. Sampling tutorials found on the web may be helpful, but choosing the right tutorials can be tricky and may not be cohesive with a holistic approach to image editing. Some tutorials may actually contradict one another, and it will be hard to sort the good tutorials from the bad, and the harmful. Beware of tricks and tips that you can’t get to work on images other than those used in the tutorial. Even some books that promise quick results or that are a series of effects may never do much to improve your process with image editing. A scattered approach that does not rely on solid process may prove more confusing than helpful. Many tutorials may be well-meaning, written by people who are excited about sharing their new-found successes. However, good intent doesn’t make for a good tutorial — and it may be that what you apply can harm your images…and it may be difficult to tell the difference.

Consulting books and courses by experts in the field, designed to get you up to speed, can save you time and effort. An expert’s years of experience can go to work for you by helping you steer toward the best features and how to use them — saving time in exploring the program. Just as you would invest in your camera or additional equipment like lenses, invest in yourself to gain the skills you need to make the best images…don’t expect the equipment or the program to do-it-for-you (you may want to read my blog about “magic tools”).

So, do yourself a favor and start a list of tools you shouldn’t use today, before you damage another image. Stop oogling at tools that sound like the solution to all your problems, and learn about yourself and what you really need to know. Focus on those that you know and that you can use productively to make your images better. I’d be glad to hear which tools are on your lists, and happy to help you answer your questions about them!

PS — There have been some changes and updates on the hiddenelements.com and photoshopcs.com layers websites that you may want to check out…with more to come. I added some elements 6 materials to hiddenelements.com and a switch to php page building so the site will be easier for me to maintain. I also added some materials to fill out the ‘under construction’ pages on the photoshopcs.com site. I look forward to hearing from visitors about the changes.

What Makes a Good Photo?

A topic that comes up again and again in my classes and presentations in one form or another is "What makes a good photo?" There is no simple answer.

However, there are pure, simple facts of what comprises good photography. Good photography takes into account many things: lighting/shadow, composition, exposure, subject, story, color, contrasts, sharpness, depth of field, and more -- often intangible -- things. A good photo is one with great orchestration of the facets of photography, that ends in a pleasing image. Likely there is a little bit of luck tossed into our salad of preparation, positioning and equipment.

There are no bonus points for dangling from helicopters except in that it may offer the right perspective. A great moment, whether captured of a penned animal or one in the wild, is still a great shot. Whether they look while standing knee deep in mud or sitting in a plush armchair, the final image is what the viewer sees...no less or more because of the subject or how it was captured. Passion for a subject should be evident in the photography of it.

There is no one philosophy that will capture a great image, but any great image will encompass all these things. I think the ideals are reinforced by the perceptions of Ansel Adams, and I have collected a few of his attributed comments here:

Mr. Adams on a good photograph:

• A good photograph is knowing where to stand.
  
• A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.
  
• A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.
  

On the rules for making a good photograph:

• There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.
  

On luck in making photos:

• Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter.
  

On perspective of observing photos:

• A photograph is usually looked at - seldom looked into.
  
• There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.
  

On how to take an image:

• To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things.
  

On photography and the creative spirit:

• No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.
  

To me, wherever there are opportunities, I am glad to share the joy of photography, at whatever level...photographs need not be marred by griping discussion for what an image could have been, if only...Shots can be satisfactory as an amateur or professional, and only your own expectations of what is good will change. Images can be explored in greater depth and improved in image processing to bring out more -- as Adams often did himself as an artisan in the wet darkroom, which today we can all explore without chemicals using Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.

As you explore your photography on whatever level, and as your skills develop, enjoy it for what it is. Enjoy a sense of accomplishment in how you improve or improve your images, and your skills. Resist the urge to be overly critical and poison the water that keeps your interest in images and photography growing.

A good photo is always the one you are about to take, and it can be better for what you learned from the experience you gain as you shoot.

---

Improve your photography with post-processing using Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Richard's Photoshop Courses can help you get more out of your images and your investment in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.

Magic Tools in Photoshop and Elements

The Entertainer and the Entertained

Magicians in their magic acts are entertainers. They perform mystical feats designed specifically to cleverly trick us -- those being entertained -- into believing something miraculous is happening when they waive their wand or perform an incantation. Deep down, we know it is somehow explainable, but we want to be entertained, suspend our disbelief, and enjoy the show. We may half-heartedly try to figure out what really happened behind the scenes, but in a way, perhaps, we almost don't want to know: it might ruin the illusion and we'd no longer be entertained. The entertainer practices his craft building the clever and believable deception, and the entertained soak it in without thinking all too hard. That is the difference between the entertainer and the entertained.

The Juggler

Photoshop and Magic
People beginning to edit images with Photoshop and Elements often scour the menus looking for the tool that will do something spectacular to their images believing great images are just a few clicks away. It is almost as if they want the program to entertain them with an element of magic or a fantasic feat of mind reading. Photoshop and Elements have lots of tools whose behavior may seem mysterious and unexplainable at first, at least one named specifically 'Magic Wand', but regretfully there are no 'magic' tools that read your mind. No matter how clever the implementation of a function or how well it seems to work there is never anything 'magic' about a tool itself. There is a calculation -- however complex -- that drives any tool application. The behavior can be described and predicted, no matter how we might resist knowing.

To Be the Magician
A true magician doesn't waive a wand and hope magic will happen -- imagine what would happen to a magician doing that on stage. The magician knows the secrets of the tricks and what goes on behind the scenes, utilizing props and tools with purpose to craft the perfect deception. Likewise, the imaging magician, must be a master of the tools and craft of post-processing. Just clicking a filter or auto function and being elated or disappointed by the result isn't mastering Photoshop and Elements, it is being entertained. Being entertained can be pleasing at times, but generally it is not how you make a magical image. The tools themselves have no way to see and evaluate the images they work on except as a calculation. They are lifeless props and props never make magic either.

Magicians practice their craft and develop their art, and you will want to do the same to achieve desired results with your post-processing in Photoshop. Changes do not have to be mystical, spectacular or flamboyant to get the most from your images, and post-processing is only a portion of the photographic craft. There is a place for being both the entertainer and the entertained, the magician and the audience. Learn and be awed by other people's craft, but strive to understand the magic of their images like a magician in the audience watching the craft of the magician on stage.

To Learn More
My courses teach the timeless fundamentals for Photoshop and Elements that you'll use as the core of your craft. I talk about magic tools in my Photoshop 101 class...namely the "read my mind" and "do it for me" tools: mythical tools designed in the minds of users hoping there is an easier way. But it is the only mention of magic tools in my courses. You get practical methodology for Correcting and Enhancing Your Images, solid techniques for matching your images on your Monitor and In Print, and advanced exploration of
Layers: Photoshop's Most Powerful Tool. Each is a facet of the tools you have to master to perfect your image editing craft. My latest book, The Adobe Photoshop Layers Book, is the perfect companion to these courses.

When to Upgrade Photoshop

Are You A Photoshop Junkie?
Photoshop junkies are people who religiously upgrade from one version to the next without thinking as if a new release were some type of signal that the current version of the program would soon expire and stop working. Others upgrading without a second thought may believe that owning the newest version of Photoshop automatically makes their images better. Regretfully, "cool" new features may sound enticing, but in the long run these enhancements may be something you rarely use -- or use once in a lifetime -- that isn't a reason to upgrade. The boring reality is that sometimes what you have is really what you need. While it does not carry the social status of owning Photoshop, it is easily possible that Photoshop Elements may serve every need you have even if you are a demanding digital technician (and at a savings of 90% (!) of the cost of Photoshop). Upgrading out of habit, obligation or anything other than a clearly defined need makes you a junkie.

The Truth About Upgrades

It is Adobe's job to make their product compelling enough so that you want to upgrade. In the early years of Photoshop, every version had a significant new feature. Digital imaging had a lot of maturing to do from the first release in 1988, so the room for improvement seemed endless. Now, as Photoshop has matured, the list of enhancements for any version may be as long as your arm, but it may be less clear if you really need to upgrade because features are not always something every user will benefit from.

Richard's Philosophy of Upgrades

1. Don't automatically upgrade to a new release of Photoshop. You don't owe it to Adobe, and your version of the program will still work months and years from now.


2. It is not a social embarassment to skip an upgrade version of Photoshop. For example, if you are on CS2 already, you can probably wait for CS4. People may point and wisper under their breath, but how long can they do that for? Just ask them for a compelling reason to upgrade.


3. Know the Photoshop upgrade cycles. You can count on a new version every 18 months or so. Don't get the last version after it's been out 17 months when it suddenly goes 'on sale' or you'll be looking and yearing to get the next version in a month all over again.


4. Don't be swept away by the hype of the 'cool' factor of new Photoshop tools. Advertising can make features look more promising than they are. Find out what tools and functions actually do by reading reviews before you upgrade, and weigh how much you think you'll actually use them.


5. Find at least two actual must-have features in any new Photoshop upgrade that will save you time, effort or improve image quality on a daily basis before considering an upgrade.


6. Don't upgrade if there are a significant number of tools and features that you already don't know how to use. Learn the tools you have. New features will take weeks, months and perhaps years to incorporate into your workflow. Give them time to sink in before looking for more features you won't use.
   


7. Find out about system requirements and compatabilities BEFORE you purchase a Photoshop upgrade. If you purchase a version that requires a new operating system, it may trigger a reaction where you'll have to buy a whole new system at many times the cost of the upgrade just to run it.


8. Just because it costs more doesn't mean it does more for you. Know what you are buying. For example, don't get the extended version of Photoshop CS3 instead of the vanilla version if you have no interest in medical imaging, 3D modeling and video editing.

Adobe has consistently put out an enticing product that gives users a real reason to upgrade. Adobe does work hard at it, they have a fabulous, well-tested product, and have generally productive reasons for upgrading. However, there is no reason to feel pressured, rushed or obligated. The new version will be there when you are ready for it, and your old, tried and tested techniques for image editing will not soon be worn out and displaced by the latest tool if you learn the right techniques. The real task is to learn the right techniques and theory to make your image editing efforts less tool-centric.

A Short List of Photoshop Enhancements by Version This is an extremely abbreviated list of enhancements for Photoshop versions. Versions 2 through 7 list the major enhancements only. CS versions are listed in greater detail so it will be evident what was added in the newer versions and what you may gain by upgrading from prior versions. Photoshop 2 (no, not CS2, Photoshop 2.0 released in 1991) added Paths Photoshop 2.5 added a Windows version Photoshop 3 added Layers (which makes my Leveraging Layers course possible) Photoshop 4 added recordable Actions Photoshop 5 added editable type, the History palette, and the dreaded Color Management Photoshop 5.5 added Image Ready for web development Phtooshop 6 enhanced the user interface, added layer styles and Blending Options dialog, and 16-bit editing Photoshop 7 introduced the Healing brush, paint engine enhancements, and introduced RAW image handling Note: At this point Photoshop broke into the CS versions, the first of which was released on October of 2003. As more users still own these versions I'll use more comprehensive (but still partial) lists... Photoshop CS (8) added: — Camera RAW 2.x — Highly modified "Slice Tool" — Shadow/Highlight command — Match Color command — Lens Blur filter — Smart Guides — Real-Time Histogram — Detection and refusal to print scanned images of various banknotes[2] — Macrovision copy protection based on Safecast DRM technology Photoshop CS2 (9) added: — Camera RAW 3.x — Smart Objects — Image Warp — Spot healing brush — Red-Eye tool — Lens Correction filter — Smart Sharpen — Smart Guides — Vanishing Point — Better memory management on 64-bit PowerPC G5 Macintosh machines running Mac OS X 10.4 — High dynamic range imaging (HDRI) support (32 bit per channel floating point) — Scripting support for JavaScript and other languages — More smudging options, such as "Scattering" — Modified layer selection, such as ability to select more than one layer. Photoshop CS3 (10) added: — Smart Filters — Quick Selection and Refine Edge tools — Advanced compositing — Streamlined interface — Better raw image processing — Improved Adobe Bridge — Enhanced Vanishing Point — Enhanced 32-bit HDR support — Peak performance — Black-and-white conversion Note: The waters get further muddied here by a release of more than one version of CS3; CS3 and CS3 Extended.

What Do I Do With Photoshop?

Question:
I am fairly new to Photoshop, but rarely use it because I don't know what to do with an image. In your last blog entry you mentioned having a 'workflow'. I guess you mean by that a process to follow when editing images. Can you tell me what I'm supposed to do?

Answer:
Short Answer: Yes. Have a workflow and use it with every image.

Working with images isn't random. You shouldn't just fiddle with some filters and auto-corrections and hope to suddenly stumble on something to make your images look good. What you really want to do is outline a process to follow so you are sure your images will look their best every time.

A good workflow takes setup into account as well as image correction.

1. Calibrate your monitor, create an ICC profile, and make color management decisions
   
2. Store your original images safely
   
3. Evaluate the image (composition color and tone) to develop a list of things to correct (in steps 4-8)
   
4. Make general color and tone corrections
   
5. Make small damage corrections (dust, etc.)
   
6. Make composition changes (cropping, replacing, removing objects...other 'heroic' measures)
   
7. Make targeted color and tone corrections.
   
8. Add enhancements (soft-focus, sharpening, etc.)
   
9. Save the working/layered version of the working image
   
10. Save a purposed/final image for output/use
    

Even long-term users of Photoshop may not have a sensible workflow in place, but the fact is that it can save tons of time and account for consistent results.If asked which is the most important of the 10 items above...I'd have to say you need every one of them to get the most out of your images. If you are missing any of them, you'll want to consider adding them to your workflow.

• Calibration and color mangement decisions can greatly affect your outcome
  
• Storing your images is essential to ward off data loss
  
• Evaluating an image tells you what to do and keeps you on track with corrections
  
• Having an order to your corrections helps you correct logically so you aren't taking on the wrong issue at the wrong time (color correcting a hat that is the wrong color before color correcting the whole image makes no sense)
  
• Storing your layered work can save tons of time in making later changes or enhancements
  
• Saving your final image separately allows you to make the best image for any purpose (e.g., a downsized JPEG for the Web, a full-sized EPS or TIFF for print)

With a workflow established, you'll never be puzzled about what to do with your images and you'll be ready to explore them the same way every time, checking over your list so nothing gets missed.

I teach a course on betterphoto.com that will help with workflow issues. It is called From Monitor To Print, and helps you establish a full workflow, covering all 10 items in the list. You can find the course here:
http://www.betterphoto.com/photocourses/RIC01.asp

If you are simply uncomfortable with Photoshop, you may need even more basic help, which I can provide in my Photoshop 101 course, found here:
http://www.betterphoto.com/photocourses/RIC03.asp

But whether you take a course or not, take notes on what you want to do and establish a workflow. It will save you time, and probably money as well!

Learning Photoshop

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@aol.com