Most Common Photoshop Misconceptions and How to Debunk Them

It is easy to pick up skills in Photoshop on your own. It’s very intuitive.

This is partially true. First of all, Photoshop is not an intuitive program. With the prior knowledge and guidance, it really can be easily mastered, but not without the grind.

Necessary prior knowledge for wielding Photoshop with ease involves graphics, cameras, monitors, printing devices (home or professional), being familiar with the basic terms regarding photography, color theory, etc. This is exactly why enrolling in a course is a good way to tackle all the beginners’ challenges, due to the fact that these fields are very time-consuming. Here, the teacher knows exactly what and to what extent does one needs to be familiar with in order to use Photoshop tools with maximum efficiency and complete understanding.

Photoshop is a raster graphics editor only.

Absolutely false. Photoshop supports vector graphics as well, similar to Illustrator. However, it does provide significantly less number of tools in this domain, a stark contrast to his aforementioned partner in crime. Next, Photoshop has the ability to create simplified 3D graphics in addition to creating 3D text a lot easier than standard 3D modeling packages. Aside from this, importing 3D models from software like 3ds Max, Maya, SketchUp for further touch-ups is supported.

Photoshop is expensive and is meant to be used only by top-notch professionals. There are a lot cheaper or free alternatives with almost the same abilities.

Partially true. Photoshop and two additional applications, Lightroom and Bridge, as well as 2GB of storage on the Adobe Creative Cloud server can be purchased for only 9,99$ per month. It is true that there are other software with the same purpose as Photoshop, but they deem to be much more complex for use, even if for some basic functions.

Aside from that, many tools coined “irreplaceable” by a Photoshop user, are those that cannot be found in other photo editors. Photoshop is a tool for professionals yes, in the sense that it has many tools and abilities, but it is also suitable for beginners and amateurs due to the fact that its bugs have been mostly “ironed out”; it is exceptionally stable and has a plethora of tools that provide editing with the minimal amount of clicks. Moreover, it is a software whose support (in the terms of video tutorials, books, forums, and courses) is so well developed that no other similar software can run a close second.

Editing photos in Photoshop is simple.

It is often said that something is done in Photoshop. Even though it sounds simple, it usually isn’t the case. People who primarily use Photoshop do so with the help of additional, later installed elements that are more commonly known as plugins. These are software additions that speed and ease up numerous retouching techniques exceptionally.

A typical working approach in Photoshop is starting with the already finished photographs and 3D models. In other words, in order to get an excellent result at the end, it is vital that the initial material is of high quality. If the initial photograph is poorly taken, it will sometimes take hours of work for it to be done correctly.

Photoshop is mostly a tool for photographers.

Absolutely false. Aside from photographers, Photoshop is used by web designers, graphic designers, 3D artists for texturing and creating backgrounds for a 3D scene, lecturers and presenters, architects, landscape architects, industrial designers, school kids, as well as many others.