Shaw Academy Photoshop Course Review

(above: the result of the course)

I subscribed on trial to Shaw Academy to improve my photoshop skills.

Background: I’m self-taught Adobe user – I was inspired by my family whose interest was in photography, but I took up illustration. I learned how to use Adobe Illustrator through through manuals and online tutorials, and am very thankful to the community of artists and designers who make all these tutorials.

I have used my skills quasi-professionally – made book covers and small illustrations, cards for my family and banners for university clubs and such; none of this was paid work (although the book covers should’ve been) and really, not something I’ve done for ‘exposure’ either – more favours and for personal enjoyment.

See, technically art is not a priority in my life. It’s funny to say that, considering I’ve spent hours and years of my life studying and making art as a hobbyist.

However, back to Adobe: in Illustrator, I feel entirely in my boat. Photoshop? Nah, not so much. I used to know about, mmm, three things – the brush tool, the clone stamp tool, and the crop tool. Everything else scares me. Well, used to.

At some point, (recently) I took more interest in photography. I studied it as a subject in school, but wasn’t doing it actively. This changed after I got my first decent-camera-phone, I started taking more pictures: nature, city architecture and anything that was lit up well by the sun.

One day I borrowed a friend’s ‘big’ and a friend and had my first ever fashion shoot (of accessories I made myself). The light set up was garbage, the photos came out too dark and washed out. I managed to salvage some to a decent extent using my meagre Photoshop knowledge. But, if I wanted to continue with what I can laughably call fashion photography, I knew I had to learn way more.

I came upon the free Shaw Academy subscription trial – 8 free lessons in Photoshop Diploma. The diploma (a CDP qualification) is for…aware(awoken?) beginners. People who know what Photoshop is but really, really not in depth. The live online lessons are very well structured from this perspective: the lecturer eases in with opening a file and adjusting workspace and progresses to layer masking.

By the end of the course, I discovered to my pleasant surprise, that I knew more about Photoshop than I suspected. (Blending, for example is a feature that works the same both programs.) The lessons gave me confidence and knowledge of how to experiment with tools given, which I think is what I was looking for.
The advantage of course is that it lays out the information before you cleanly – what is a mask, what is the pen tool, and how to use marquee tool. But! It will never substitute actual practice. You’re not going go into this course (or even the Advanced Photoshop Diploma, I suspect) and come out a master. The lecturer liked saying that the advanced course will really teach you how to make your pictures ‘perfect’ which is honestly a bit unrealistic, because as far as I’m aware, as an artist’s own work is never perfect enough…which is more of a matter of a philosophical debate, I guess.

TL;DR
I was confused and scared by Photoshop despite being proficient at Illustrator. A Photoshop course at Shaw Academy showed me that I actually knew way more than I thought I did.
I now understand how to adjust light levels, and how clipping masks work. Dodge/Burn/Sponge tools can still go to hell though.