I purchased the Basics of Photoshop: Fundamentals for Beginners ecourse over at Skillshare so I could start learning how to use the program and help with my blog redesign. I paid for the course myself and was not compensated for my opinions.
Background
I’ve been procrastinating about learning Photoshop for a long time. I still use Microsoft Word to lay out and print my photos and to design things like this Project Life-style card.
I purchased the Blog Design Love 2.0 course, which assumes students can do basic image editing. I wanted to get the most out of that course so it was time to learn Photoshop.
I tried Skillshare because of the emphasis on creative classes. It felt like the content was geared to me. You can pay a monthly fee and have unlimited access to a library of courses (but not all of them, check to make sure) or pay a one-time fee per course. This was my first Skillshare course, so I paid for it individually.
This fundamentals course is taught by Meg Lewis and is for Photoshop, not Photoshop Elements. There are fifteen videos broken up into five units.
The Pros
At first, it didn’t seem like the course covered a huge amount of content. But wow, I’m really impressed at how much I can use Photoshop now! It feels like this. I designed my header image for this blog and the social media buttons.
One of my biggest problems with Photoshop is not knowing what any of the buttons do and not knowing how to do what should be something really simple (such as resizing a photo). This course was great. It started off with the very basics including how layers work and keystrokes to make things easy.
My favorite thing I learned was how to draw a shape and then insert a photo to fit that shape. It’s how I made my circular profile photo in the sidebar. I even took it a step further and learned how to insert photos into text! Learn how here.
I made that! Look forward to some gratuitous pictures-inside-shapes because I’m going to reuse this skill until it goes out of style.
The Cons
Just a couple of small annoyances. All the keystrokes covered in the course are for a Mac. I was able to figure out the PC equivalent (it’s usually Alt or Control) but it would have been nice for the instructor to cover both.
The resolution for the videos wasn’t that great. It was hard to see what she was doing unless I went full screen. It was hard to follow along that way because I had to constantly pause, minimize the video, and then go into Photoshop and practice what she just covered. If the resolution was better, I could have had the video and Photoshop open on the same screen.
Summary
I really liked the course and was surprised at how much I learned. If you have no idea where to start with Photoshop, I recommend it. I’m planning on taking Meg’s other Fundamentals of Photoshop courses to learn more.
There are a bunch more courses I want to take at Skillshare generally, like how to hand letter. I haven’t purchased a membership yet, mostly because I don’t know when I will have time to start them and don’t want my membership to end up like a Netflix DVD subscription. Have you tried Skillshare courses? Let me know in the comments!
Basics of Photoshop: Fundamentals for Beginners at Skillshare, $29 or by monthly subscription
Almost Never Clever 