Get Started with Adobe Photoshop

Adobe prescribes a simple and clear means by which to obtain a certificate in Adobe Photoshop, its visual communication software. An aspirant should take up an Adobe certifying test from Certiport, the Adobe-authorized testing provider.

This is the same suggested set of steps needed to get most Adobe certifications.

A good number of teaching institutions and learning platforms offer training in Photoshop. While most of these are reputable and effective, you could take a shot at this course from SimplivLearning. What makes this course good is that it familiarizes you with the exact learning that puts you on the road to a great career in Adobe Photoshop.

It gives you the preparation needed to pass the Adobe Photoshop certifying exams, which will give you just the skills that the industry is looking for from Adobe professionals.

Adobe has fixed the price of the Adobe Photoshop certificate exam at $65 for individual students, and $80 for commercial users.

Well, quite a lot. An Adobe Photoshop certificate is the best proof you can have of your visual communication skills awarded by none other than the leading brand for this software.

This certificate can take you far in the domain. It is a living testimony to your skills, and this strengthens your candidature in the job market. Adobe has designed this course after deep and meaningful consultations with the industry, as well as with academia. So, if you have this certificate, employers need no higher proof of your skills, your ability to understand what the market needs, and your employability.

It is also worth mentioning that a professional with certification is not only preferred; she is also paid more than a noncertified candidate with the same experience level.

No. Those who have passed a level of Adobe certification exams get their certifications at between $63 and $150. This is the price after the discount of 33% that Adobe offers on these certificates.

An Adobe Photoshop certification is valid for two years. It should be renewed every two years subsequently. For each attempt, you should ideally take up the latest version of the exam, because it makes you more job-ready. However, you can take up retiring versions (meaning the version of the certification exam that is being phased out) too, and this certificate to lasts two years.

Every Adobe certification renewal exam has fewer questions, and is less expensive to sit for, but should be taken up before your running certification expires. If you are unable to take up the certificate renewal exam, you have to take up the regular exam.

Mostly yes. The reason we say this is that while most learners take between two and three months of preparation to get Adobe Photoshop certified, this is not a guarantee, because, this is not possible without your effort.

The pay for a Photoshop designer starts at around $30,000 and can go up to $85,000 with several years of experience.

Easily. The beauty of finessing a creative work like designing with Photoshop is that you don’t have to actually seek employment. You can start your own business, or can freelance. And yes, if you want to, you can choose employment, too.

Adobe offers different levels of certification based on the number of years you put into this profession. These are the three levels of Adobe certification:

-       Professional: Entry to one year of experience

-       Expert: 1 to 3 years of experience

-       Master: 3 to 5 years of experience.

As we can see, you can start with absolutely nil experience, and can attain the highest level of Adobe certification within five years of having started.

The Adobe Photoshop certification exam is considered one of moderate difficulty. The main reasons for this are these:

-       It is very likely that those who prepare for this exam are in a job. So, if their job keeps them busy, they could have less time for preparation, making the paper appear more difficult than it is

-       The test tests the candidate’s knowledge of Photoshop software. Many candidates find that like English grammar, it is easy to subject to practical use, but not as easy if required to explain theoretically. Many candidates experience that they may not be able to explain in a test paper what they would be doing every day as part of their job.

There are 51 questions in the exam.

The passing score on the Adobe Photoshop exam is 66%.

The duration of the Adobe Photoshop exam is 65 minutes, set to a timer.

Adobe Photoshop isn't exactly known for its ease, but with the right preparation, and with the required determination and passion, it is not difficult, either. 

There is no fixed or standard method of doing things in Adobe Photoshop, so long as you get a grasp of how the software is built and how to use it. However, experienced Photoshop professionals recommend that you learn the Image Analysis tools first.

Why? Because Photoshop is a quintessential image or visual communication software. So, getting to understand the image analysis tools puts you on a clear path to learning. We would say this is the equivalent of learning about fonts in MS Word or getting an idea of how to organize slides in MS PowerPoint. You can learn these functions at any stage, but doing them first makes your understanding of the software easier.

Again, there is no fixed rule here. Yet, when learning this software, which you would be using for perhaps your entire career ahead, it makes sense to embark on a logical path that makes your learning structured.

Towards this goal, what you could perhaps do is get the concept of graphic designing instilled into your head, because this is the core of Photoshop. To get back to the example given in the previous question, getting an idea of graphic designing for Photoshop is the same as getting to understand the fundamentals of grammar while using software like MS Word.

Not really. The thing about Adobe Photoshop, as it is with most such software applications, is that the complexity increases as you get to explore the full extent of its features. However, by the time you do that, your level of familiarity with how the software is designed would have increased, helping you preempt this difficulty.

All the features of Adobe Photoshop are built around the faculty of graphic design. So, all the basic skills you will need to work on Photoshop successfully and creatively hinge around this art. The features which test this skill in Photoshop include:

-       Brushes

-       Selection tools

-       Transform tools

-       Brightness and contrast

-       Cropping

-       Layers

-       Masking

-       Saturation

-       Blending modes

-       Curves

-       Healing brush

-       Histogram

-       Pen tool

-       Sharpening

Adobe has designed Photoshop as a photo editing software. Most professionals and laymen alike use it for these main purposes. They use this software for anything from making minor touchups into the photos, to all the way to altering the art form and shape.

Adobe Photoshop is used for a number of art-related activities. These are some of them:

-       Creative art

-       Artistic design

-       Web designing

-       Photography

-       Advertising

-       VFX art

As we saw, Adobe Photoshop is loaded with a slew of features. A pick of just four of them could be:

-       Editing

-       Adjusting layers

-       Cropping photos

-       Making photos black and white

The two main purposes of Adobe Photoshop cover the realms of print and online mediums. These are how it is used in these two divergent areas:

Print: to create graphics and layouts for a number of print channels such as newspapers, magazines, posters, etc.;

Websites: website designers find Adobe Photoshop indispensable for creating website designs, logos, and other forms of digital art.

Adobe Photoshop has a number of tools in it. These are five of them:

-       Move

-       Marquee

-       Lasso

-       Eyedropper

-       Clone stamp

When you want to make a career in graphic designing, learning all the skills in Photoshop is a wonderful thing to do. Right now, the basic Photoshop skills that could give weight to your resume are:

-       Photo editing

-       Print design

-       Free hand drawing

-       Sketching

-       Vector tracing

You can do umpteen things with Adobe Photoshop. Here is our selection of 10 of these:

1.     Make your pic black and white: Can enhance period photos no end. Think of Schindler's List

2.     Make cinemagraphs: With this feature, you can make any one element of the film move while keeping the others fixed. Imagine the effect it has on nature or fight scenes, for instance

3.     Double expose your photo or film: Gives different shades to different parts of the image or film, making the effect dramatic

4.     Create miniature photos: Remember the inset photos we saw while growing up?

5.     Brighten the photo: The Double-Light Effect in Photoshop enables you to add a dash of extra light to your photo. This is very well suited for certain kinds of photography

6.     3D: You can add 3D effects to your images. When done with the right images, its effects can be awesome to frightening. You can use 3D for text too, with Photoshop

7.     Create watercolors: Well, creating watercolors is no big deal, but did you know that with Photoshop, you can do this without washing brushes?

8.     Bring pop art to life: With Photoshop, you can add zing to pop art by mixing the right painting techniques with photo manipulation

9.     Bring the retro feel into your pics: You can take and place your pics in another era with Photoshop

10. Combine images: You can collate two different images and make a nearly new one out of them with Photoshop

As we can see, there is a lot that a graphic designer can experiment with and do with Adobe Photoshop.

If we are referring to the most indispensable tool in Photoshop, it has to be the Pen tool. This is the one with which the designer uses this software for starting out her work. So, we could consider this the most used tool in Adobe Photoshop.

Many designers find this difficult to use initially, but over time, they learn to use it to a point where their work is unthinkable without the Pen tool.

Yes, very much.

Yes, but this is not free. You have a 30-day free trial, after which you have to subscribe it.

Adobe Photoshop supports both types of graphics file formats, namely raster, and vector.

Examples of raster file formats are png, jpeg, PSD, TIFF, etc.

Examples of vector file formats include Adobe Illustrator, pdf, SVG, eps, and others.

Adobe Photoshop is thus a very adaptable and flexible software program with which graphic designers put their skills to full use.