10 ways to improve your Photoshop skills
April 21st, 2010
1. Follow Tutorials
There are a growing number of other websites and blogs that regularly publish Photoshop tutorials. All of these sites are valuable resources for improving your skills, whether you’re looking to develop specific skills or just looking to improve in general.
2. Experiment
The best way to learn anything new is to experience it for yourself. While following tutorials can be incredibly helpful, you should also take some time to just experiment on your own to see what you can create. You can try to apply things you have learned from tutorials, or just experiment with things you’re not familiar with.
3. Start with the Fundamentals
There’s so much to learn with Photoshop and so many possibilities that it is essential to get a firm grasp of the basics and fundamentals before attempting to move too far along. Like anything else, the foundation of your Photoshop knowledge is critical to the end result. If you’re new, rather than trying to follow along with advanced tutorials, take some time to get familiar with the basics before anything else.
4. Participate in Groups and Get Feedback
After you’ve learned by following tutorials and you’ve done some experimentation on your own, it can be helpful to get feedback and constructive criticism from other designers. There are groups of graphic designers all over the place that can be excellent sources of feedback.
5. Blog about Photoshop or Design
If you’re attempting to improve your abilities with Photoshop, blogging on the subject will help you to stay active in your pursuits and it will force you to keep learning. Working on the content for your blog will be an excellent educational experience.
6. Subscribe to Online Galleries
Online galleries that display exceptional work by various artists are an excellent source of design inspiration. This inspiration will come in handy when you’re looking to experiment on your own and create impressive results.
7. Find an Expert to Follow
Regardless of what field you’re in, following and learning from an expert can be incredibly beneficial, and graphic design is no different. If you hope to become a standout designer, why not find someone that you admire and pay close attention to their career and their work?
8. Read Design Magazines
One of the downfalls of being in a field that has so many resources available online is that it’s easy to forget about all of the great offline resources at your disposal. While browsing through designer portfolios and subscribing to online galleries are great sources of inspiration, you may be missing out by not reading any traditional print magazines.
9. Try to Replicate the Work of Others
One proven way to learn is to attempt to replicate the work of other designers. I’m not suggesting that you rip off other designers by selling this work or taking credit for it as your own (which unfortunately is all too common, especially online). What I am suggesting is that in your own experimental work that is meant just for learning purposes, take an exemplary piece from another designer and do your best to duplicate it. If it’s just used for your own educational purposes and not sold or re-distributed it is perfectly acceptable.
10. Participate in Design Competitions
Once you’ve become pretty comfortable with your own progress in learning Photoshop, you may want to challenge yourself and have some fun at the same time by entering a design competition. In most cases there will be some potential prizes and you’ll be motivated to push yourself towards your true potential.
What’s Your Learning Strategy?
What do you do in effort to learn more about Photoshop and graphic design in general? If you’re an experienced designer, what approach helped you to get to where you are today, and what do you do to keep learning new things?