31 Days to Learning Photoshop Basics – Day 1 (Introduction)
A few months back, The Nester posted about the 31 days of Change Series she is hosting during the month of October. She invited fellow bloggers to participate by coming up with their own “31 days of…” series. The goal is to blog everyday during the month of October on a specific series that you (bloggers) come up with. The Nester is writing her series on 31 days of Charming Imperfection. You can read about other series here.
Welp, as you know, today is October 1, so I’m starting my series. I’ve decided on “31 Days to Learning Photoshop Basics (for Bloggers)”. This series will focus on things that bloggers will use photoshop for most, like basic photo editing, adding text, and basic photo manipulation.
I have to admit…I’m a total photoshop junkie. I love teaching people about photoshop so that they can wallow with me in nerd-dom. I’m the kind of person that takes “computer geek” as a compliment. I think Kip and I coud have had something good.
Just kidding, honey.
My goal in this series is to stick with the practical basics that I use all the time. I spent a lot of time learning features of photoshop that, while impressive, aren’t practical in what I do as far as blogging goes (thus why I added “for Bloggers” to the series title). I’m going to talk about what I wish someone taught me when I was first starting out. In my opinion, photos either make or break a blog and photoshop is a way to make good pictures step your blog up a notch.
First let me say this: don’t give up. There is a learning curve to Photoshop, but it WILL click one day. It’s a little like learning a musical instrument: it’s boring in the beginning because you’re stuck doing scales and learning how to read music. But once you get the hang of it, you’ll love it and you can have fun with it. So just stick with it and you’ll love it. I promise!
This series will be no where close to an exhaustive tutorial that will cover eveything Photoshop. But I encourage you to click around in Photoshop because, of course, you can’t learn it unless you try. Photoshop is a very robust program and this will barely scratch the surface of what it can do. It will, however, cover what you need to know to get started. And hey, you gotta start somewhere right!? Alrighty-o, here we go! (tomorrow, that is)