Photoshop can be a frustrating, but also an enjoyable software program to learn or teach yourself. With a seemingly endless number of features, filters and plugins it can sometimes become somewhat overwhelming.
Indeed, Adobe's primary image editor is one of the only graphics tools that is used by a vast number of professions (graphic designers, web developers, photographers, pre-press and commercial printers, amongst others) for an almost endless variety of applications.
It is fair to say that few, if any, designers can claim to have mastered all of its techniques. Even the Adobe Photoshop help manual and the various third party teach yourself Photoshop books barely scratch the surface.
One of the most fascinating features about studying Photoshop is that you soon learn that it often provides a variety of different tools and techniques for achieving similar results. Indeed, experimenting with those techniques is often the best way of teaching yourself.
You never know what you are going to learn next about the program and this is one of the reasons why online tutorials can be so helpful. Not only can they offer immediate advice on solving problems, but they can sometimes also offer insights into new methods of creating old effects.
A graphic designer's working environment is not like most other office-based professions. Graphic designers need much more than simply a desk and a cheap personal computer. Equipment such as light boxes, cutting tables, spray booths and storage space for paper, boards and other presentation materials are also a requirement. It is for these reasons that many small office /home office (SOHO) designers eventually decide to find premises away from their living environment.
Creatives who are planning to meet clients on their own premises may also want to investigate the availability of meeting room space. Many shared office environments have 'board rooms' that can be booked for meetings.
And when it comes to technology, designers also have to be very careful about choosing which computer they will be using. Lots of processing power, RAM memory, large monitors and fast hard disks are all a crucial part of the graphic designers' tool-set. Deciding whether to standardize on Apple Macs or Windows PCs may also be consideration. Traditionally print designers tended to prefer Macs, but is no longer such a crucial factor.
Web designers may decide to budget for both operating systems, if only for testing purposes. Although now that Intel-based Macs can run Windows natively, this may be easier to achieve than previously.
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