How to Use Photoshop: The Ultimate Guide for the Design-Impaired Marketer

Posted: January 10, 2013

[caption id="attachment_11105" align="alignright" width="500"]image HubSpot[/caption]Fewer things can be more frustrating that trying to express your visual marketing ideas, when you can't figure out how to operate a digital imaging software program, like Photoshop. These tips will help you save some marketing dollars (and quite possibly your sanity) by being able to navigate Photoshop yourself, well enough to make your visual content pop.

In the current day and age of marketing, it’s no secret that visual content is an essential part of any successful marketing campaign. Many marketers have learned that not only does visual content catch the attention of our audience, it also happens to spread like wildfire on social networks.

So, why aren’t more companies jumping on the visual content train? Well, there are three big reasons: ability, time, and budget.

Most marketing teams don’t have a full time graphic designer on the team -- that means you have to either hire a freelancer or agency, or invest some serious time into learning how the heck to create your visual content in-house. And if you're anything like most marketers out there, the first time you opened Photoshop, you closed it after five minutes and decided to reach for your freelancer's phone number (and your CMO's wallet), instead.

Thing is, Photoshop isn't as overwhelming as that initial experience makes us all think! That's why I decided to create this guide to Photoshop ... because after fiddling around with it for years, I've been in your shoes, and want to show you how easy it can be if someone just explains it in plain English.

Now, it wouldn't be realistic to guarantee that you'd be a Photoshop wiz by the end of this guide -- but that isn’t what it’s designed to do. The goal is to provide you with the understanding you’ll need to use the powerful tools in Photoshop, in a timely, efficient, non-hair-pulling manner, so you can elevate your visual marketing, like, today. Sound good? Alright, let’s jump right into the core elements you need to know about Photoshop.

How to Use Layers in Photoshop

If any of you have dabbled in Photoshop, you understand how frustrating it can be if you don’t know how the layers work. This is by far the most important element of Photoshop, and in my opinion, one of the reasons many people throw their arms up in frustration -- but once you understand how they work, they'll make your life much easier.

Read the entire article How to Use Photoshop: The Ultimate Guide for the Design-Impaired Marketer at HubSpot.