Thanks for all the replies everyone on the batch feature. It it true, I don’t understand the terminology, plus to understand one feature, you have to read about another first. The help menu was saying to play, create an action. I’m like, what the hell is "play" and "action"? I rarely use the program. Where did you guys learn all this stuff? Consider me illiterate. I just can’t read technical stuff. I actually have to do it rather than read. Any good videos out there?
I ate brains of deceased designers. Not quite palatable but adding some sugar helped a lot. Besides I had to convince some donors that were a bit reluctant to serve and be served.
Truly yours, H.L.
[translation: Yes, there are lots of books to buy. If you do a search here with the terms ‘books, photoshop, learn’ you’ll get some threads with excelent recommendations of different levels. Welcome, BTW]
Experiment, experiment, experiment, and if that doesn’t work, experiment some more. I’m pretty much self-taught, and I was completely overwhelmed by PS when I first started, but the more you mess around with it and find out what different things can do, the more confortable you get. I still have much to learn, but I’m very good with it now. Consider subscribing to "Photoshop User" magazine (http://www.photoshopuser.com), which always has fantastic tips, for beginners and advanced users. The editor of that magazine has published a few books full of great techniques. I’ve also learned from several books. One of the best has been "Photoshop Restoration and Retouching" by Katrin Eismann. Have fun.
There are actually 27 ways to do anything, though no single person knows more than three. Gather 9^3 Photoshop users who were trained separately, and compare notes.
When I first got PS4 as a new program, I was completely overwhelmed and the manual made no sense to me. It seemed to be written for someone with a degree in the stuff. Now as I look at the manual for PS7, I think, hmm, they finally made it easy to understand! But maybe after 7 years of experimenting, searching the internet, reading everything I could find, I ended up understanding those words that used to be foreign to me back then. I am still learning and I believe the limits are only in the imagination.
By spending hours, and hours, and hours, days, weeks, months, years with it, just experimenting.
Touch and explore every menu item, every feature. When you come to something that makes you go ‘WTF?’ pull out the manual and look it up, read the help files, do some tutorials.
Try every suggestion you see written, as there are a million ways to acheive any given result.
Mainly….. do not be afraid! It seems so many people get intimidated by PS needlessly. I mean the menus don’t bite! You can’t ‘break it’ by exploring!
Your own creativeness and imagination plus Photoshop=WOW!!!
Now g’on! Launch that app and start messing with it! (manual nearby in case you need it)
You’ll never be all that proficient at Photoshop, or any other truly powerful app for that matter if you can’t be bothered to read. That’s why the programmers and designers took the time to write the information down. If you can’t read technical writing, tutorials on the web are excellent substitutes, but you will still need to read. Learning to use a search engine, and making attempts to find the answer yourself before posting a lame "do this for me" will usually garner you far more helpful responses that often will reveal some of the "27 ways to do anything in Photoshop," but the lame way will sometimes still get you a response…
Try a search for "Photoshop actions tutorial," read and follow the directions. You’ll then understand "Play," "Action" and how they work.
In Jeff’s defense, it didn’t sound like he didn’t read, just that he didn’t understand what he did read. Terminology gap. The solution? More reading of course! 🙂
User Manual, pg 397, "About Actions," and pg 403, "Playing Actions"…The first sentence of each tells in VERY SIMPLE WORDS "what the hell" "play" and "action" are. Defense motion denied.
AS an industrial machine repairman by trade, I find that statement to be patently, well, pretty much true.
Even though I had sailed through AutoCad and Computer Vision classes in college, PS was something completely different. Enough hours of practice and reading made me reasonably proficient. Several years later (7), I can do pretty much what I want without thinking about how Im going to get there.
There is no substitute for experience.
If you’ve never heard that before, I claim to have made it up.
There is no "ah-hah!" moment, where you all of a sudden get it. As with just about every complex skill, anybody who tells you that they’re an expert, has probably missed something. Each discovery we make opens us up to accept the next. Anything you can do, from reading the manual, to examining the works of others, to emulating techniques, opens another path.
There are ah ha moments everywhere Ergo, it’s an ongoing process. I’ve found this in computer programming, too: every door you open, opens to another room full of doors.
And let’s not forget the "duh, slapping of the forehead moments" we all have those no matter how much we learn!
Patty
p.s. If we didn’t have the "duh" moments, we wouldn’t really appreciate the "ah ha"
Click on everything. Hold down shift, ctrl or alt (or any combination thereof) when doing things to see what happens. Right click on everything. Thats basically how I learned.
Ol’ Whozit said: "Hobby or not, if an individual, of any basic intelligence, cannot read, nor comprehend those beginning sentences [about actions-inserted for clarity], they will not be utilizing photohop in any significant manner worthy of in-depth discussion…"
I may use an action once every three months. I sure don’t understand more than "click here and something is supposed to happen (if your lucky) that you want to happen.
As for "not be utilizing photoshop in any significant mannor"… Well an art museum show director thinks differently about what I do with Photoshop.
How people use this, and other programs depends on THEIR needs as well as what they want to use it FOR. Some of us DO have major problems with parts of Photoshop including fighting through manuals, forum searches, links, etc. I don’t ask a question here until I have made a honest effort to find and try hints and suggestions made to others.
And for me, at least, I have no current need for seperation plates, or other press related features. I don’t even know what a COATED SWOP is. Does this lack of knowledge AND compleate INability to understand that make me unsuited to post here or even not qualified to use Photoshop?
And, based on what I have seen in the past, I have to add this. I’m not trying to start a flame war. I’m not putting down your opinion, it is yours and you certainly are intitled to it. I’m not upset, mad, angry at you or your opinion. This is a reply to the opinion, NOT to you. Please try to strip any emotions you may read into it because I did not intend any to be there. We all differ in ability. We all differ in how we use Photoshop. For you, possibly you make your living with it and see things compleately differently from those who, like me, are not.
Very nice Op-Ed piece, Bill Lamp, but you’ve managed to selectively opine without addressing the subject of the quoted sentence.
The context of the beginning senteneces regarding actions that I mentioned are the VERY SPECIFIC answer to the Original post of: "I’m like, what the hell is "play" and "action"? The first sentences define in basic English exactly what the terms "play" and "action" are. More detailed information follows on how to apply those terms to your usage of Photoshop. Art Directors (amongst others)looking at results created in Photoshop have no knowledge or interest in your comprehension level of what you are doing beyond the final results, and possibly the capabilities to repeat the process on demand.
You wrote, "I don’t ask a question here until I have made a honest effort to find and try hints and suggestions made to others," and then, "And for me, at least, I have no current need for seperation plates, or other press related features. I don’t even know what a COATED SWOP is. Does this lack of knowledge AND compleate INability to understand that make me unsuited to post here or even not qualified to use Photoshop?"
Well, first off, separation plates and press related features as relate to PS ARE covered in varying levels of detail in the manual. On page 91, you will find what SWOP is, although Photoshop makes NO mention of coated SWOP, so you would be able to make an honest effort before posting to find out more. Yes, such a post WOULD be unsuited here if it were phrased "What the hell is SWOP?" Also, print processes are NOT Photoshop’s main function. Neither are actions, for that matter, but actions are a MUCH more intrinsic function of the application than default settings relating to offset publishing.
I still stand by the fact that it’s far too easy to cry that reading the manual and doing forum searches is "too hard" when the truth of the matter in a large majority of cases is that the poster is too lazy to make an effort, even to the point of reading the first sentence of paragraphs that define the terms in question.
As for qualifications to use Photoshop, if Adobe required intelligence in order to be a user, they would have probably gone out of business a decade ago, after the 2-3 people who can read and comprehend bought their copies, and the rest of us would still be using Paint…
The role of Photoshop, or any app in one’s career has NOTHING to do with whether or not an individual takes the time to read the answer right that has already been provided, or instead, posts a request for someone to give the same information as the manual, but put it right in front of their nose, saving them and expenditure of effort.
No anger, no flame, just a clarification of the opinion you thought you were replying to. You missed the focus of the opinion, which is that ability, knowledge or experience have nothing to do with laziness, or lack of effort to find answers that are readily available; skill levels, frequency of usage, or work environment irregardless.
Learn how to optimize Photoshop for maximum speed, troubleshoot common issues, and keep your projects organized so that you can work faster than ever before!
Related Discussion Topics
Nice and short text about related topics in discussion sections
