Photoshop CS6 woes

[iampoor1]

AM I the only one who doesnt "get" photoshop?

I am trying to design very simple pedal enclosures, and even completing simple tasks such as creating borders have alluded me!

TO be fair, Ive only had it a few days, is it that the learning curve is rough or Im missing something? Some things I understand....but building front panel layouts has just been a royal pain.

 

[frans]

The last Photoshock manual (if Adobe saw the need for it, after all, currently it sells for a few hundred bucks and they can't be arsed to print a manual) was about the size of the phonebook of London, and as much fun to read. It has a gazillion functions most people never need. If you don't need even a third of that, don't bother with it and get some open source freeware... maybe Gimp? It's not your fault. To top things off, Adobe has decided not to care about it's paying users anymore and cater more and more only to it's stockholders.

 

[rob_gould]

Photoshop isn't really the one for panel design.

Try Illustrator if you have the full Creative Suite. Corel Draw is also popular, and I recently had a stint with Inkscape which is free but is a bit of a pain when it comes to exporting certain file formats.

In short, you need a vector graphics package, not a photo editor.

To answer your question, I spent a while learning Photoshop years ago. It took about 3 - 4 months to become fairly quick and competent. I just followed online tutorials and practised a lot.

 

[rainton]

I studied motion graphics design and photoshop is a vital part of that.
So I know this tool very well but still I learn something new it can do once in a while - it
is very complex - maybe  not as complex as Adobe After Effects but still...

And I can only repeat what rob said already:
Photoshop is for photos and pixel images (when you increase the size more and more
you can see the pixels)

You definitely need a design tool like Adobe Illustrator - which is for vector graphics
where images created with paths.
But then again Illustrator is as complex as Photoshop so you might
get crazy trying to use it without any experience...

 

[PRR]

I've used PaintShopPro for well over a decade, got somewhat comfortable, and can pick-up *older* PhotoShop in a few hours if I *must*.

Newer PhotoShop is a mess, IMHO. (They also ruined CoolEdit.)

"A few days" is not enuff.

And as said, it's the wrong paint-brush for mechanical drawing. You want a Vector Graphics tool. It can be done with a photo-editor, but I'd scratch a burnt stick on birch bark before I'd try to PhotoShop an equipment panel.