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Ps From Practitioner to Pro

You can already drive Photoshop. This course teaches you to work like a professional: selections driven by the image itself, real color management, high-end retouching, commercial compositing, and automation that scales. Fewer first steps, much deeper craft.

📚 What This Course Is

This is the sequel to the intro course. It does not re-teach layers, masks, or the basics of Camera Raw and Curves. Instead, every technique you met once at a basic level returns here as a full professional workflow, and three genuinely new pillars appear: color management, luminosity and channel masking, and data-driven, scripted automation.

The teaching model is unchanged: project-driven and spiral. Every module ships a finished, portfolio-worthy deliverable, and the four ideas that run all of Photoshop (non-destructive editing, the layer stack, masks as grayscale, and selections) keep returning at greater depth.

By the end you will be able to…

  • Build luminosity and channel masks and cut out genuinely hard subjects
  • Manage color properly: working spaces, bit depth, and soft proofing for print
  • Grade with Curves, gradient maps, and LUTs, and match color across images
  • Retouch a portrait to a magazine standard, naturally
  • Build a believable multi-image composite with matched light, shadow, and atmosphere
  • Run design systems, data-driven graphics, and scripted batches

✅ Prerequisite

The intro course, or equivalent comfort with layers, masks, selections, Camera Raw, Curves, Smart Objects, and a basic two-image composite. If any of those feel shaky, spend a little time there first; this course moves fast and assumes them.

🧭 Before You Start

Two minutes of setup keeps the whole course honest. This is not a module (there is nothing to deliver), just the professional baseline you will work from:

  • Work in a sane color pipeline. Edit in 16-bit when you can, and know your working space (sRGB for web, wider gamut for print). We go deep on this in Module 2.
  • Calibrate your monitor if you are doing color-critical work. An uncalibrated screen makes every grading decision a guess.
  • Learn to read the histogram. Before you touch a slider, look at where the tones actually sit. "Diagnose before you edit" is a habit you will use in every module.
  • Set up your workspace and a few keyboard shortcuts for the tools you reach for most. Speed is a professional skill.

Full color-management detail lives in Module 2 · Lesson 1; this is just the orientation.

🗺️ The Learning Path

Eight modules in three tiers. Alongside them runs a parallel Recipes II library for the harder how-tos.

flowchart LR subgraph PATH["📚 Learning Path (in order)"] direction TB M1["Module 1<br/>Selection & Masking"] --> M2["Module 2<br/>Color & Tone"] --> M3["Module 3<br/>Retouching"] --> M4["Module 4<br/>Compositing"] --> M5["Module 5<br/>Design Systems"] --> M6["Module 6<br/>Generative & Automation"] --> M7["Module 7<br/>Multi-Shot"] --> M8["Module 8<br/>Capstone"] end R["↔ Recipes II<br/>(jump in any time)"] R -.-> M2 R -.-> M4 R -.-> M6

🟦 Core Craft

The three skills every serious edit rests on: selection, color, and skin.

Module 1: Advanced Selection & Masking

Deliverable: a flawless cutout of a hard subject (wispy hair, glass, foliage) on a new background.

Module 2: Color & Tone, Deep

Deliverable: a cinematic grade plus a print-ready, soft-proofed export.

Module 3: High-End Retouching

Deliverable: a magazine-quality portrait. Frequency separation in production, dodge & burn sculpting, a natural finish.

🟪 Commercial Work

Turn craft into client-ready output: composites, campaigns, and scale.

Module 4: Commercial Compositing

Deliverable: an advertising-style key visual. Matched perspective, light direction, shadows, reflections, and atmosphere.

Module 5: Design Systems & Type

Deliverable: a campaign (poster + social set) from one master. Type systems, templates, linked assets, multi-deliverable export.

Module 6: Generative + Automation, Advanced

Deliverable: a data-driven batch plus a generative-assisted composite. Conditional Actions, variables, a scripting intro.

🟥 Going Further

Combine many frames, then make something of your own.

Module 7: Multi-Shot Techniques

Deliverable: a merged panorama or focus-stacked image, and a short animated social asset.

Module 8: Capstone

Deliverable: a self-directed professional brief with a written case study, presented.

↔ Recipes II

A parallel library of advanced how-tos for the tasks you will want to look up out of order:

  • "How do I luminosity-mask a bright sky?"
  • "How do I match the color of two different photos?"
  • "How do I soft-proof for a specific printer?"
  • "How do I set up a data merge for 50 product cards?"

Each recipe links back to the module where the idea is taught in depth.

↔ Open the Recipes II library → · 28 filterable recipes

🛠️ Required Software

  • Adobe Photoshop (2024 or newer recommended — Module 6 uses recent generative and data-driven features).
  • A calibrated monitor is strongly recommended for the color and retouching modules.
  • Optional: a pen tablet makes the retouching and masking modules far more comfortable.

💡 About the pictures in this course

As in the intro, panels and dialogs are hand-drawn diagrams, not live screenshots, so they stay crisp and highlight only what matters. Before/after examples are real edited photos where the technique allows it; techniques that must be demonstrated as a process (like a luminosity mask) use clear labeled diagrams instead.

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