The need to learn Adobe Photoshop came when I had to do assignments for my high school newspaper. The journey toward mastering Photoshop was nothing less than exciting. From amateur photo manipulations to professional touch ups, I’ve learned what I needed to know about Photoshop through online tutorials. When I first started, I used Photoshop CS. Now they have CS5, a whole new platform for added creativity and simplified ways of making your images come to life.

I never took professional graphic design courses with the usual assigned homework. I didn’t need to for the simple reason that I had no intentions of becoming a professional graphic designer. I began learning photoshop because I liked the way you could use various tools, filters, brushes, and colors to manipulate images, create posters, and edit pictures. Photoshop is an amazingly useful tool, especially in the age of digital single-lens reflex cameras, Facebook, and smartphones, where taking pictures has become a way of sharing day-to-day moments with everyone around you.

With Photoshop online tutorials I learned how to create flawless-looking skin without pimples, acne, or facial scars. There are so many designers out there who provide step-by-step screen-shot tutorials of how you can use various tools to create crystal clear skin. Once I mastered that, I was hooked! I graduated from clearing up patchy skin to applying glitter makeup on my eyelids. There is no question that I put better makeup on using Photoshop than I do in real life.

Once you understand the basic components of Photoshop, photomanipulation, creating interesting texts, editing photos, and drawing and painting are a breeze. Places like deviantART and Photoshop Tutorials are great places for beginners who are trying to navigate their way through Photoshop’s various tools and commands. Basic design techniques and Photoshop ‘magic’ help you understand the basic uses of several tools, layer palettes, channels, and so on. The designers who frequent the site devianART.com upload preset brushes, patterns, textures, and swatches such that all you need to do is download them for free and use them on your artwork instead of creating these items from scratch. When you browse online, you will find many types of tutorials on each technique, with each graphic designer coming up with his or her own methods of achieving a desired effect using specific techniques.

Online tutorials have helped me master Photoshop in such a short time. No doubt I still have more learning to do, but each step I’ve taken in mastering Photoshop has always come from viewing a tutorial online and practicing it myself afterward. I’m now in the process of getting a camcorder and plan on learning how to professionally edit movies, with the continued help of Photoshop, of course.