Do I need to know Photoshop?

Question

Is it a required program in the industry? how much of it should I know? what are the most important tools?

Answer 1

I'd highly recommend learning the program since it is "industry standard". What that ultimately means at the end of the day is it's a well known program, and it only helps to know how to use the program. A lot of jobs, both art related and not art related can benefit from the usage of this program. Photoshop is a powerful program and it can honestly mesh well with a lot of fields including photography, illustration, graphic design, game development, 3D Modeling, fashion design, animation, website design, etc.

If you're looking to "get your feet wet" before committing to a monthly subscription, I'd recommend practicing with programs like Krita/ GIMP to get an idea of how similar programs work and what to expect. I will say, both programs offer alot of similar features, but some more advance features aren't necessarily available like they are in photoshop.

Answer 2

Whether you need Photoshop or not depends on what you're doing. For "straight" photography, where you're controlling image basics like brightness, contrast, white balance (color tint), etc., with minimal retouching, then you'd do fine using Lightroom or something similar, and these programs are easier to learn overall.

For some types of photography, where you need to process lots of images--event photography, "photo booths," weddings, etc.--Lightroom is actually the better choice, as you can easily batch-process images (if you can shoot them with consistency, frame to frame). Even if you need to hand-tweak each image, Lightroom is still easier for big projects because the adjustments you make to individual files are essentially "notes" within Lightroom for how you'd like that image processed--they're recorded as part of the process, without delay--Photoshop, on the other hand, will need you to save each file, and if you have a layered Photoshop file, that can take much longer (especially if you're using old-school external hard drives).

So then why Photoshop? Because you can "go deep" with better control, especially when it comes to retouching or adding image elements (that is, if you're doing montages, stacking light and dark exposures of the same shot, or doing graphic arts generally). Also, it's still the case that Photoshop allows you to apply multiple non-destructive curves (for really precise control of brightness, etc.), but Lightroom only allows one. (Related to that is Photoshop's ability to do layers.) As handy as the "exposure" controls are in Lightroom, I still do my serious, lower-volume work, like fine-art and commercial, in Photoshop.

Answer 3

No, not necessarily, but it is the current industry standard and is a powerful and flexible program.

However, I would say yes, as you should learn it regardless of actually using it or not so you can easily mesh with teams format wise.