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You've learned the basics of Photoshop, but now what? Before we call it quits, let's take a look at the next steps you can take in furthering your Photoshop education and some resources that'll help you along the way.
Despite everything we've covered, Photoshop is such a versatile application that there's still a lot to learn. We've actually posted a lot about Photoshop and have a few additional resources of our own to help you learn how things work. Additionally, we've pulled together some online and offline resources to help you learn just about anything else the application can do.
Note: These are not sponsored recommendations even though offline resources go to Amazon product pages and some of the online resources cost money. We just wanted you to know there's nothing in it for us and these are just resource we actually like. If you've got some suggestions of your own, please share them in the comments.
More Lifehacker Photoshop Lessons
- How to Get the Best Color Out of Your Photos
- A Beginner's Guide to Image Sharpening
- How to Whiten Teeth in Your Photos
- How to Change a Specific Color in a Photo
- How to Make Your Smartphone Photos Look Like They Were Taken with a Nicer Camera
- How to Give Any Photo the Analog Camera Treatment
- Get Better Black and White Conversions from Your Shots
- Create Seamless Textures in Photoshop
- Stitch Pictures Together with Photoshop's Photomerge Tool
- Improve Photographs Taken from Airplanes
- Add Custom Reflections in Photoshop
- Sharpen Your Digital Photos with the Unsharp Mask
Online Resources
- National Association of Photoshop Professionals - NAPP is a membership-based service that provides its members with some very helpful services. First, you get their magazine each month (Photoshop User), and it will teach you some great new Photoshop tricks. You'll also have access to the NAPP help desk, which is a place you can ask questions when you have trouble with Photoshop (or just want to learn how to do something), and many online video tutorials. These are just a couple of benefits of NAPP. Go check it out to learn more.
- Lynda - Lynda is an online training library that has tons and tons of videos. It costs you around $30 a month for access, but if you just want to learn a couple of things you can generally fit them into a single month and then cancel your membership (which can be later renewed). They have tons of lessons about Photoshop that'll teach you things you didn't even know it could do. There's so much to learn and they have all of it covered. While you can learn a lot for free online, Lynda is probably the best resource for Adobe-related learning.
- You Suck at Photoshop - This is one of the most entertaining ways to learn some new Photoshop tricks, and it's free. You Suck at Photoshop won't teach you more than a handful of specific things, but it is funny and you'll actually learn the techniques that are explained—many of which you'll use again.
- Adobe: Learn Photoshop CS5 - Adobe provides some resources of their own that cover a lot of basic things we glossed over. If you want to learn more about HDR, Camera RAW, new features in CS5, etc., this is a good place to start.
- PSDTUTS+ - Like most tutorial sites, PSDTUTS+ cover al ot of tips and tricks rather than a full series on what to do. You'll want to bookmark this site to keep an eye out for tutorials that interest you. It's a good way to learn little tricks you'll be able to repurpose and reuse later. Tutorial9 and Photoshop Lady are also good, similar options.
Offline Resources
- Books by Scott Kelby - Scott Kelby created NAPP (mentioned above) and has a ton of books and videos. He's been teaching Photoshop for quite awhile and knows what he's talking about, and his books tend to specialize in different areas of Photoshop so you can concentrate on the skills you actually want.
- Adobe Photoshop CS5 One-on-One - Deke McClelland is another name you'll hear often in the Photoshop learning community. He has lessons available on the previously mentioned Lynda.com, but you can also get his book if you prefer to learn offline.
You can contact Adam Dachis, the author of this post, at adachis@lifehacker.com. You can also follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
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