What to Learn After Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a digital editing program that contains a wide range of functions and applications. Creative professionals across several industries use the program to create beautiful images that are used in marketing campaigns, social media, and many other promotional materials. Suppose you already know how to use Photoshop. In that case, you might consider learning other design programs like InDesign or Illustrator to round out your skills and prepare yourself for a broader range of careers. We’ll provide more information about additional Adobe software programs below so you have a clear understanding of what skill you want to tackle next.

What is Photoshop?

Photoshop is a software program available as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud. Its primary functions include editing, enhancing, and creating digital images from scratch. The program has a wide range of impressive capabilities. Creative professionals across nearly every industry can use Photoshop to design anything from graphics for social media, logos, and the interface of an entire website!

You can use Photoshop to adjust lighting and colors and to create a single image from your favorite components of existing photos. The program comes loaded with plenty of retouching tools, enabling you to remove anything you feel makes your image less than perfect. If you’re scanning a physical photo into the program, you can edit it to remove stains, tears, and wrinkles. Photoshop also contains rudimentary animation capabilities, meaning users can create GIFs with the program as well.

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

What Can You Do with Photoshop?

Photoshop is the industry standard software for photo editing. The program can make virtually any adjustment you can think of, and you can add or remove almost anything you want to create your perfect final image. For example, photographers who work with large groups will often use Photoshop to make a composite of several images; this way, they can combine the best photo of each individual into one picture.

But Photoshop is used for so much more than enhancing images! Graphic Designers frequently use the program to design logos and advertisements for their clients. Because the program allows users to combine multiple images, designers in any industry can use Photoshop to quickly demonstrate how a proposed design would appear on a product. This helps their clients get a clear picture of the final product and quickly make changes, saving both time and money.

It’s also commonly used in web design. Although you can’t code a website in Photoshop, you can use it to create mockups of interfaces, backgrounds, and graphics that designers will add to a website later. Photoshop also contains powerful image compression tools, ensuring the images on a website are clear rather than pixelated. Web Designers can also use the program to build the layout of a website, though other tools are more capable of creating a responsive design.

Adobe Illustrator

Several creative professions require proficiency in Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, making it an excellent choice for subsequent learning. Illustrator uses vectors to produce images, while Photoshop uses pixels or raster graphics. Pixels are individual points, and vector graphics use curves, lines, and other shapes based on mathematical equations. Therefore, images in Illustrator are much more scalable than those created in Photoshop. Most companies will have vectorized versions of their logos so that their brand can appear anywhere and remain recognizable.

Just like Photoshop, Illustrator is a powerful tool. The primary difference between them– vector graphics vs. raster graphics– is how most users decide which program to use when creating a design. Photoshop is perhaps a tad more versatile than Illustrator. After all, you can’t edit images in Illustrator, but you can design images from scratch in Photoshop. However, Illustrator and Photoshop are very compatible with each other. This means that images initially created with Photoshop can be imported into Illustrator and converted into a vector file.

Adobe InDesign

Adobe InDesign is another standard program used in conjunction with Photoshop. Its primary function is to create precise and appealing layouts for print and digital projects like flyers, brochures, and posters, all the way up to magazines and textbooks. It has additional features like creating editable PDFs, premade templates, and customizable headings. Graphics built with Photoshop or Illustrator can be seamlessly added to a layout in InDesign.

Many design professionals use both programs in their work; it just depends on what they’re working on at the moment. Designs containing a lot of text are generally easier to build in InDesign since the program automatically applies the proper spacing and centering to ensure your text is readable and pleasing to the eye. Graphic Designers and Digital Designers are two examples of professions that would need skills in Photoshop and InDesign since they often help develop promotional materials. They might use Photoshop to enhance an image for social media but use InDesign to create the label for a new product.

Adobe XD

A newer addition to the Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe XD is a prototyping tool used to create and test mobile applications and websites. The program allows users to design every element of an application and define how the pieces interact with each other. It is a vector-based application like Illustrator, which is helpful since people access websites on a variety of devices with a wide range of screen sizes. Training in Adobe XD is a smart investment since businesses are expanding further into the digital space.

Users already familiar with Photoshop can usually get comfortable with XD fairly quickly since both programs offer similar features. These two applications are most likely to intersect with professionals who work in web design/development, user experience (UX) design, and user interface (UI) design. For example, people in these fields might use Photoshop to create a banner or other imagery for a website, and they’ll use Adobe XD to test the functionality of their design to ensure it offers the user a positive experience.

Learn Photoshop with Hands-on Training at Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop offers a range of Photoshop classes that are sure to meet a variety of scheduling needs and learning styles. Whether students attend in-person at Noble’s Manhattan campus or virtually from anywhere in the world, they’ll learn from expert instructors in small groups. All Noble courses also include a free retake option within one year, giving students additional opportunities to hone their skills at no additional charge.

For students who only have a few days to spare, the Adobe Photoshop Bootcamp is an excellent way to move from beginner to intermediate in just three days. This course guides students through various projects that each target a specific skill within Photoshop. By the end of the bootcamp, students will be able to complete tasks like adjusting colors, creating a composite image, and removing components of an image to make the end result more appealing.

Photoshop is also covered in a few of Noble Desktop’s more intensive certificate programs. There is a Graphic Design Certificate that teaches Photoshop and two other Adobe programs– Illustrator and InDesign. If you are curious about using Photoshop to design web and mobile interfaces, the UI Design Certificate might be a great fit. You’ll incorporate several design principles to create stunning and accessible interfaces using Figma and multiple Adobe programs. Participants in these programs will add their coursework into a portfolio they can show off to potential employers.

Key Insights

• Photoshop is a professional-grade digital editing program with an impressive range of functions and applications.
• Fields like graphic design, digital design, and UX/UI design all require the use of multiple Adobe products.
• Learning Photoshop can make learning other design programs easier. Gaining skills in additional programs also improves your resume and makes you eligible for more career paths.
• You can learn Photoshop comprehensively with live, instructor-led training at Noble Desktop.