I am very Photoshop knowledgeable, with over 20 years experience in Advertising and Marketing agencies, retouching images for clients and prospective clients, from simple fixes through complex editing of existing photographs; and I have also created unique conceptual images and compositions that can only be made in Photoshop...this part is actually a lot of fun to do and I very much enjoy it. I will say that I saved my employers many thousands of dollars doing retouching and photo composition in-house.
As far as tutoring, I have had some experience tutoring Adobe programs; I have taught Illustrator classes, and assisted as a tech at PhotoShop classes, at FIT in New York, said assistance being a one-on-one tutoring, if you will, of any student who wasn't exactly clear on what had just been shown; this was to help the class maintain a steady pace and assist the students who weren't exactly clear to 'catch up' with the instructor.
In order to tutor a student, in any software package, a thorough going over of the toolbox is always a good place to start; an explanation, a demonstration, another demonstration, and then asking the student to use the tool on their own and learning how to become proficient through practice. There would be some emphasis on using the keyboard shortcuts...that is the key to speed and speed is money. In PhotoShop I would emphasize masking as being a pivotal, perhaps crucial, part of the software; it has been my experience that the concept is initially difficult to grasp; some time needs to be spent on demonstrations; but once understood opens the door to understanding. Filters would be explored, Smart Objects, type, curves, levels...I would also ask the student to take advantage of the many tutorials and cool how-to's that are available on the web...and possibly recommend some books to look at, such as some that have been written by experts such as Scott Kelby.
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