(not retouch photos)
(not for photographers)
Most Photoshop courses start by teaching you how to remove redeye, crop a photo, or remove unwanted background elements. Skills used by photographers, not web designers.
The valuable interface design skills, such as paths and layer styles, are saved for intermediate and expert level courses. Meaning you have to suffer through learning how to turn a photo black and white before you can learn to improve your software design.
Photoshop is such a powerful tool that it is used by everyone from print designers, to photographers, to app developers. Unfortunately that power comes with a complex feature set that is time consuming to learn.
That’s why it’s important to learn the tools in Photoshop that are actually used for designing websites and software—skipping past the parts that may be useful someday, but won’t get that app designed in time for your product launch.
How much is your time worth? If you’re like me your time is one of the most valuable things you possess. Designing an application faster means you have time to add more polish.
Cutting through the unnecessary fluff in most training courses means you learn faster and have more time to create. Personally I’d use that time to create a new product—or better yet, take some time off to spend with family and friends.
Working as a professional designer for over 7 years has taught me which techniques are critical to producing great designs (and which you can ignore, since you won’t use them regularly). This course is based around teaching you the Photoshop techniques to create the beautiful designs you see every day around the web.
Then you can practice the techniques on your own by working through the provided exercises to make you really learn the necessary skills.
Each lesson starts by teaching you a particular technique—then puts it into practice with several hands on examples, designing actual interface elements.
In Photoshop for Web Design you’ll learn exactly the skills needed to use Photoshop to design great software and websites. From iPhone apps to web apps, to product sales pages, you’ll start with the skills and tools used by professionals.
Cmd + option + shift + N + E
Flattens the entire visible document onto a new layer.
About Your Instructor
Nathan has been designing software with Photoshop for 8 years. In that time he’s suffered through hundreds of tutorials designed to teach photography—not interface design. Because of that frustrating learning experience he is determined to teach software professionals exactly what they need to know to design great software.
Nathan is the author of Designing Web Applications, The App Design Handbook, and Authority. He also founded the email marketing company ConvertKit.
Basic Techniques
What you need to get started using Photoshop for Web Design.
Learning the interface
15:13 | 6 videos
Shapes & Paths
10:40 | 3 videos
Layer Styles
30:03 | 5 videos
Typography
27:12 | 4 videos
Advanced Techniques
Now that you’ve mastered the basics, it’s time to work like the pros.
Shortcuts
6:21 | 2 videos
Advanced Layers
19:12 | 4 videos
Advanced Paths
14:23 | 4 videos
Patterns & Brushes
10:56 | 2 videos
Case Studies & Exercises
All the techniques learned already, applied in real-world design projects.
Exercises
56:32 | 7 videos
Designing Blog Graphics
29:08 | 6 videos
Redesigning United.com search
1:06:19 | 4 videos
Designing a Mac App
1:34:56 | 6 videos
Designing an app for iOS 7
46:11 | 3 videos
Designing Commit for iOS 7
40:04 | 3 videos
Designing a course web app
45:14 | 5 videos
Designing a product sales page
2:15:26 | 5 videos
Packages
$149
$249
(magically written in advance)
With the new trend of designing in the browser—as well as new design tools—I often get asked “is Photoshop still the best tool to use for web design?”
I think so. But it’s not just me. Photoshop is still (and will be for a long time to come) the workhorse of the entire design industry. A few designers may be using other methods, but nearly every design shop relies heavily on Photoshop.
Even the designers who work almost entirely in the browser take a screenshot of their work and bring it into Photoshop when they have anything complicated to design. Quite simply, Photoshop is the best tool for designing for the web today. In order to be a competitive designer you need to know how to use it (though that doesn’t mean you can’t use other tools as well).
All the screencasts are recorded on a Mac using Photoshop CC. It adds too much time to the videos to constantly say “Cmd + C on the Mac or Ctrl + C on Windows” so I default to saying the Mac keyboard shortcut. Though once you learn the patterns it is very easy to translate a Mac shortcut to Windows.
Hint: most of the time you just swap Cmd for Ctrl.
Yes, I have more content I want to add, so everyone who purchases will get free updates for one year. I may launch a new version at some point, but that isn't planned right now.
Of course! If you aren’t happy with the course, just write in within 30 days and I’ll refund your money. Though in order to improve the course I will ask what you didn’t like. Though you aren’t obligated to answer in order to get a refund.
The course is all video screencasts between 2 and 15 minutes long each. I try to break each topic down into bite-sized lessons. You can download all the videos for offline viewing.
It is self-paced, so you can move through it as you have time. In the next few weeks I will be adding more exercises so you can practice what you just learned.