Adobe Photoshop is one of the world’s most popular design programs, with millions of users relying on it for creating and editing images, graphics, and other visual content. While Photoshop has a reputation for being a powerful and versatile tool, many people wonder how it compares to other design tools in terms of ease of use, learning curve, and overall capabilities. Researching complementary skills is essential when learning a new skill. Doing so will help you make more informed decisions about what you want to learn, and it will help you decide whether or not learning a specific skill is the right decision for you. You will also learn what skills you want to learn to complement your training later. 

Read on to learn more about training options related to Photoshop, including Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe After Effects.

What is Photoshop?

Available within the Adobe Creative Cloud, Photoshop’s primary functions include editing, enhancing, and creating digital images from scratch. Professionals across nearly every industry use Photoshop to design anything from graphics for social media to the interface of an entire website!

You can use Photoshop to adjust lighting and colors, or create a single image from your favorite components of existing photos. It comes with several retouching tools, enabling you to remove anything that makes your image less than perfect. Photoshop also contains rudimentary animation capabilities, meaning users can create GIFs as well. 

Read more about what Photoshop is and why you should learn it.

What Can You Do with Photoshop Skills?

Photoshop allows you to edit, add, or remove almost anything to create your perfect final image. However, Photoshop is used for so much more than enhancing images. Because the program allows users to combine multiple images, designers in any industry can use Photoshop to demonstrate how a proposed design would appear on a product. This helps clients clearly visualize a final product and quickly make changes, saving time and money. Although you can’t code a website in Photoshop, you can create mockups of components that designers will add to a website later. Photoshop contains powerful compression tools, ensuring the images on a website aren’t pixelated.

Skills Related to Photoshop

As you can probably guess, learning Photoshop can prepare you for working with a range of different design programs. What you decide to learn will depend on the specific designs you plan to create. Here, we’ll discuss other creative tools and their intended purpose, so you know which program works best for your professional goals.

Adobe Illustrator

Like Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator is used for creating and editing digital graphics. They both have a similar interface and use many of the same tools, including the selection, paintbrush, eraser, and pen tools. Each program also uses layering, allowing for non-destructive editing and easy management of complex designs. The primary difference between Photoshop and Illustrator is the type of graphics they are best suited for. If you need to edit or manipulate photos, Adobe Photoshop is the better choice, while Adobe Illustrator is better for creating clean, scalable graphics. 

Beginners wanting a thorough overview of this program can enroll in Noble Desktop’s Adobe Illustrator Bootcamp. This class provides students with drawing templates to help them quickly master Illustrator’s vector Pen tool, preparing them to create all sorts of designs for print and digital applications. Students will also learn the fundamentals of typography to design appealing logos for packaging and other branding purposes. 

Adobe InDesign

Adobe InDesign was created to help users design multi-page documents like books, magazines, and brochures. Like Photoshop, it has layout tools such as grids and guides that make creating and aligning elements on a page easy. However, Photoshop does not have as many of these tools since it focuses more on freeform design. Photoshop has text editing features, but they are more limited in scope and not as powerful as those in InDesign, which offers users the ability to create and edit complex text styles, hyphenation, justification, and more. Overall, Photoshop and InDesign are two powerful tools professionals can use together to create high-quality digital content. 

Students who want to learn this program can check out the Adobe InDesign Bootcamp at Noble Desktop. This brief introduction includes lessons about creating both long and short documents and how to add dynamic text and graphics to the finished products. Students will also learn how to export their work for print and digital publications. 

Adobe After Effects 

While Photoshop is designed for still images, Adobe After Effects is primarily used for video editing, motion graphics, and visual effects. Photoshop has rudimentary animation capabilities, which can be an excellent introduction to working with After Effects since it is generally considered more challenging to learn due to its complexity and emphasis on video production. The two programs also share some similarities in their interface and features. Overall, however, they are designed for different tasks and are usually used by different types of creators.

Noble offers an After Effects Bootcamp in person or online. Students will work with an expert instructor to learn professional animation skills. Hands-on lessons include transitions, green screen removal, video rendering, and audio effects. Interested students should know that a working knowledge of Photoshop is required before attending this course. 

Figma

Figma is a design program used primarily for graphic design, user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design, and digital art creation. Some similarities between Figma and Photoshop include their layering and prototyping capabilities. Layering allows users to manipulate and edit different elements of an image or design separately, and prototyping enables them to test and refine their work before finalizing it. However, Figma is a much better tool for creating interactive prototypes and designs for web and app development. It has more collaborative features than Photoshop, and many consider it the easier of the two programs to learn. 

Noble’s Figma Bootcamp provides beginner designers with a crash course in UX and UI design. In a short time, students will create a complete layout optimized for desktops, tablets, and mobile phones. The course also covers Figma’s collaborative elements and team libraries, so participants are prepared to use the program in a professional setting. 

Learn Photoshop Skills with Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop’s Photoshop classes meet various scheduling needs and learning styles. Whether students attend in-person or virtually, they’ll learn from expert instructors in small groups. All courses include a free retake within one year, giving students additional practice if needed.

Noble’s quick Adobe Photoshop Bootcamp guides students through projects like adjusting colors, creating composite images, and removing components to improve a final image. The Graphic Design Certificate teaches Photoshop and two other Adobe programs– Illustrator and InDesign. The UI Design Certificate teaches using Photoshop alongside Figma and other Adobe tools to design web and mobile interfaces. Participants will also create a portfolio they can show to potential employers.

Key Takeaways

• Photoshop is a state-of-the-art digital image editing program used by creative professionals around the world.
• Other Adobe programs with a similar learning experience include Illustrator and InDesign, though they all have distinct uses. 
• Students interested in animation may enjoy learning to use Adobe After Effects in addition to Photoshop.
• Figma is another design program that is more tailored to creating positive user experiences with digital products.
• Professionals interested in comprehensive Photoshop training can enroll at Noble Desktop, which offers classes either in person or online.