As we answer questions from our “Contact Us” page, we will be expanding the Frequently Asked Questions.
What is?:
- What is RSS?
| RSS is similar to a newsletter. As we change the website (add new Photoshop Challenges, Pop Quizzes, or Tutorials) you will receive notification through a reader. We would recommend that you pick an RSS Reader first before you try to subscribe to an RSS feed. There are many RSS readers, but they are broken down into 2 different categories. 1). Online Readers, 2). Offline Readers. The only 2 readers that we can recommend (you should do your research on free RSS readers) is for an online reader: Bloglines and for offline reader: Feed Demon. Usually from the time we post on our website, the RSS will be sent out within the hour. **Once you have picked an RSS reader, come back to our site and Left click the Subscribe RSS Feed button located on every page on the left hand side, right underneath the menu. |
- What is a Photoshop Challenge?
| We post an image that we created and your job is to recreate the image. All of the tools we used to create the image are covered in previous tutorials. If you have followed along with each tutorial, you will find the challenge very easy to complete. We give you all the important key facts of the challenge such as font names or even image sizes, etc. If you are having trouble recreating the image, we have a Hints section that will point you in the right direction to get your answers. If you are still stumped, we always create a quick answer video. |
- What is a Pop Quiz?
| As your aware there are always a 10 question quiz at the bottom of each written tutorial (PDF or Post). A Pop Quiz is tougher questions based off of usually 10 different tutorials. Each quiz will range from 20-30 questions and will allow you to see how much knowledge you remember. |
- What is the “Bookmark” button do on the left hand side?
| The “Bookmark” button located on the left hand side of every page and this option allows you to bookmark our site as a favorite. |
- What is the difference between the “All Tutorials” button and the tutorials that are displayed on the screen?
| Think of “All Tutorials” as a table of contents for the tutorials. We show you what course number it is and the tutorial title and a summary of what you will accomplish if you complete this tutorial. It allows you to go directly to the tutorial by Left clicking on the name of the tutorial or the image. There are many ways to locate a tutorial on our site and this is just one easy way to determine if the course is right for you. |
Tutorial Creation/Promoting:
- How long does it take to create one of the tutorials on Photoshop Education?
| This ranges from 8-14 hours per tutorial. This may sound like a lot of time, but there many steps to get it from nothing to an actual post. An actual post is usually 20 pages long. We have to first determine what should be the next course (we want to build on your knowledge and not jump to far ahead). Once we have the subject, we write the initial draft with the screenshots, plus the quiz is created. It then goes through a proofing process. Then we format the blog post, create the PDF and record the video. 90% of the videos are recorded only once and nothing is scripted (that is why you will see us making errors while recording the video). The only time we hit the delete key and re-record is if there is technical problems or there is a distracting noise in the recording (one time the microphone picked up someone slamming on their brakes). Once we edit the video, we begin uploading the video to support our video streaming. In this time frame, we also upload the edited video, PDF, or any other files (images, actions) so the user can download and review it offline. Once everything is set, the post is sent out to update our website. This time does not include promotion of the tutorial. |
- I do not see any major advertisement on the site, how do you make money from the site?
| This site was created to give back to the community. Yes, that is the truth! We realized that there a lot of excellent advanced Photoshop sites on the web, but there were only few beginner sites and none of them that we know of that give you Photoshop Challenges, Quizzes, PDF downloads, Streaming Video, Downloadable Video Files, Pop Quizzes or even Additional Support Files to complete the tutorial. Yes you will not see any advertisement on our web page. In the future we may add advertising, but we would only be adding this to support the cost of a new domain and other areas. We are not in it to make money. We are only doing this to help other people! |
- How much time do you spend on promoting the site, because I love the site and would love to see it grow in popularity?
| This is the area that we truly lack. We do not spend a lot of time promoting the site (roughly 10-15 minutes a week), by submitting the tutorials only to a handful of tutorial submission sites. We would rather spend our time creating new tutorials or Photoshop challenges or even Pop Quizzes. We truly feel, word of mouth will help us grow quick enough. To us we would rather see 300 users returning to our site which means they enjoy the content versus 800 users that never return. We feel the word of mouth is the best approach and we are seeing results because our returning user count grows everyday. If you have an easy way to promote our site, feel free to contact us! For now, PLEASE help us by spreading the word about our free Photoshop Beginner/Intermediate site. |
- I currently own another website, can I promote it on your site?
| If you are looking to trade links, please use the “Contact Us” button located in the menu. If you are NOT looking to trade links and want promote a tutorial from our site on your site, feel free to use any of our tutorials (written or videos), but we require you to post our link with the video or written content. We are always looking for sites that will even further expand the knowledge of Photoshop to our users. We understand that once a user gets through all of our tutorials (we have only created about 10% of our total tutorials) and wants to learn advanced features, we will need to send them to another site.
With that said, the site should pertain to Photoshop and should support quality tutorials on the Advanced subjects. We will monitor your site for a few weeks and send you an accepted or declined email. |
- I have a recommendation for a tutorial, how can I submit my idea to your site?
| Please use the “Contact Us” button located in the menu. We will review all tutorial recommendations. If we feel that it is a good recommendation for a new tutorial, we will create it and add it to our site. |
- I have a feature you should add to your site, how can I submit features?
| Please use the “Contact Us” button located in the menu. We always love hearing suggestions. If there is a feature that will help a user learn Photoshop easier, we are all ears. By the way, we have already implemented a few user features such as the Pop Quizzes came through a recommendation. Users wanted us to change how we identified a certain area of a screenshot. In the early tutorials, we just used a text overlay of (A) or a (B), etc. We changed this to have an “A” in a yellow circle so it would stand out better in the image. |
- Why don’t you have all the features of a certain subject in a tutorial? I noticed the last tutorial you missed certain tools that are related to the subject.
| There is a fine line on showing you everything about a subject, versus showing you the basics. On certain subjects such as Masking, we have broken it into 2 different courses and even after the 2 tutorials there are a lot more features that we did not discuss. The reason we do not show all of the features is because we do NOT want to overload the user with to much information at once. Sometimes we forget about a certain way of using a tool. Just like most people, we get into a habit of doing a certain task a certain way. If you feel we should of covered something in a tutorial, feel free to use the “Contact Us” button located in the menu. |
- How often do you create new tutorials?
| Due to the fact it takes us a fairly long time to publish a new tutorial, we average about 1 every 3-5 days. Sometimes it takes longer because we are working on new Pop Quizzes or Photoshop Challenges. |
Help:
- How can I help?
| The best way you can help us is by coming back to the site often and enhancing your skills within the Photoshop program. We also ask that if you like the site, please tell all of your friends. As we stated before, we get 80% of our promotion from word of mouth. It is up to you to help us keep the site going forward. |
- I am confused about a specific beginner area in Photoshop, how can I get help from your site?
| Have you re-read the tutorial about the subject? Have you watched the streaming video? If yes, then feel free to use the “Contact Us” button located in the menu and we will be happy to respond to your question. In the future, we are looking at using a Forum so you the user can ask your questions, but for now, please use the “Contact Us” button. |
- I am looking for all of your tutorials in 1 digital book, were can I download that from?
| At this time, you can only download individual digital books in a PDF format. In the future, we will rewrite each course and combine all of the tutorials into one digital book. |
Coming Soon:
- I see your changing the layout, style of your tutorials, what other features will be added in the future?
| We are constantly looking at reports to determine if the users are using different features of the site. If the feature is NOT working, then that section is removed. We do not want to clutter the website up with useless items. We ask the question “What can we add to help the user learn Photoshop quicker and easier?”. One of the areas we are currently investigating is to have a Forum where users can ask questions, interact, display created Photoshop challenges, etc. We are also looking at what can a Facebook account offer us, due to the fact we already have a Twitter page and you can bookmark the website with our button, plus you can subscribe to the RSS feed. |
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