How good are you at photoshop?

snow patrol

snow patrol

snow patrol

Soldato
Joined
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Hi all,

i've been a cc subscriber for a few years now but typically only tend to use lightroom. However, i've come to realise that there are certain things that lightroom just doesn't cut it for and i've been delving more and more into photoshop...with limited success i must add.

It's just so massive and daunting and i feel like, as someone in their mid thirties already, it might be 'too late' for me to really learn it and get to grips with! Is that a silly thing to say?

Realistically, how easy is it (with the help of youtube / guides etc) to get 'good' at photoshop? Or is it something that takes years and years of continued use?

I'd be interested to hear other people's tales of ps :)
 
It's not that difficult to learn, and it's never too late unless you're dead.

The tutorials on YouTube are great, but there are also subscription sites that have really good tutorials as well. Digital tutor videos are extremely good.
 
It isn't that difficult to learn though some of the more advanced uses for stuff can be another level.

Never liked the program though myself - years ago I used to use a package called Micrografx Picture Publisher which aside from more rudimentary layer support and a more hands on manual approach was just as powerful and I found a lot more streamlined to work with once you had a flow going - sadly development on it was abandoned and the better versions don't work on 64bit Windows very easily.
 
Honestly for photography I feel it's overkill, ironically. Lightroom does everything I need. Having seen Hollywood blockbusters graded by professional colourists in my career; with nothing more than colour balance/primary grading, selective windows to lighten/darken areas.. well there's just no need for me to do much more than that. Gone are the days where I'd pore over one photo in Photoshop with a million layers etc.
 
The learning curve in PS is as steep as you want it to be because the program is almost infinite. I can do some stuff but I still feel like I barely scratch the surface. I mostly just use the liquify, clone and heal tool the most with the what they call Frequency Separation for skin fixing.
 
I find it's continued use is essential. I learn something, and then don't use it for a few months - then forget how to do it. Sporadic use just doesn't work!
 
What do you shoot?

For portrait, it would be good to learn basics of dodge & burn, as well as frequency separating (though plug-ins like Portraiture can achieve good results too). You'll also need to know how to use liquify and layer masks. Image compositing would be good to learn.

For landscape, it would be good to learn basics of luminosity masks, and get familiar with plug-ins like Nik Collections, as well as adding orton effects. Stacking techniques could also be useful for longer exposure shots.

For architecture, you'll need to know the theory of tilt/shift as well as keystone/distortion correction and stitching in post-processing.

For street & journalism, I don't think altering the contents of the photos to be a good idea, so these rely less on Photoshop.
 
voidshatter said:
What do you shoot?

For portrait, it would be good to learn basics of dodge & burn, as well as frequency separating (though plug-ins like Portraiture can achieve good results too). You'll also need to know how to use liquify and layer masks. Image compositing would be good to learn.

For landscape, it would be good to learn basics of luminosity masks, and get familiar with plug-ins like Nik Collections, as well as adding orton effects. Stacking techniques could also be useful for longer exposure shots.

For architecture, you'll need to know the theory of tilt/shift as well as keystone/distortion correction and stitching in post-processing.

For street & journalism, I don't think altering the contents of the photos to be a good idea, so these rely less on Photoshop.
Click to expand...

I tend to do weddings for the most part. And at the moment i'm only really using photoshop when i need to do proper spot removal or removing background distractions on certain shots. Lightroom's capability for this is pretty limited to be fair.

I don't want to learn everything, as i'm sure 95% of what photoshop offers is not relevant to me, but it would be good to really get to grips and practice with things that would be WORTH learning. I'm not even massively familiar with layers etc, apart from the basic concept!
 
I like to think I'm competent at using Photoshop, but it's taken years of practice and learning. I really don't like Lightroom that much - I think it has become bloated and slow and needs a re-haul coding wise. For RAW processing I'm beginning to use Capture One more extensively - it trumps Lightroom for IQ and colour manipulation in my opinion by quite a margin. In time, as I get more accustomed to it I think it may allow me to use Photoshop more sparingly.

As for are you too old to learn Photoshop ? No - it just takes time and a willingness to learn. There is plenty of material online to get to grips with ( or books if you prefer to learn that way ). What I would say is that the techniques you need for editing one genre compared to another eg. landscape vs portraiture can be quite different, so once you have learned the basics focus on a direction that interests you.
 
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