Teaching A Photoshop Padawan (beginner)

Why would I want to teach a 7 year-old Photoshop?

First, I happen to actually have a 7 year-old in my house. I’ve got a boy that wants to work for daddy and be a part of Camp Photoshop. He wants the work and the paycheck that goes with it so he can buy more Legos.

Like most kids, my son likes to draw. It seems to be a great way to express what’s in his imagination. Coincidentally, that’s the same reason I like to use Photoshop ... from the imagination to canvas.

The problem for my son is that a blank piece of paper and a Crayola seem much easier to use than a complicated program with lots of menus full of words that don’t completely make sense. To my son, Gaussian Blur sounds like a character from Star Wars.

Yet, I persist with my desire to introduce my son to Photoshop. After walking him through some “before-and-after” work I’ve done — and seeing his reaction — I came to a conclusion. The Photoshop user interface is just too intimidating and complicated for a Photoshop padawan. So we took a step down and moved to Photoshop Elements.

My steps for teaching Photoshop Elements to a padawan:

1. Explain to your beginner that you have installed this special program for them on the computer.
2. Load an image of interest. Make sure to have some fun source images to work with like a picture of a family member, pet or favorite place. (I used a picture of a cousin with a lizard. My son was pretty excited about manipulating an image of his cousin.)
3. Show some basic tools like brushes and erase. This may be difficult because your beginner may want to jump right in with no knowledge. That’s not a good approach because it will lead to quick frustration and giving up for most beginners.
4. Stay close, step back and watch. Let them have at it. See what they do with the basics you’ve shown. Be prepared to jump back in and help. Your beginner will start getting some fun ideas and need some help. They may also get stuck somewhere and not understand what’s going on. For example, layers can be confusing. You may need to help navigate to the layer they want to work on.
5. Expand their knowledge. If they seem to be repeating themselves or are getting bored, jump in and demonstrate another tool, filter or function.
6. Don’t force it. Let them play as long as they seem to be enjoying it. Come back in a few hours or days and bring up the idea of playing with that picture program you showed them. Or they may bring up the idea themselves.

The Results

I was pleased with how quickly my padawan managed moving around the interface. I think that’s the result of several years of exposure to video games and kid-oriented web sites.

Using the basic tools didn’t seem to be much of a challenge either. The areas of difficulty revolved around understanding that each tool offered different options. Even certified experts like myself have a hard time keeping track of that. More experience with the tools should help resolve that issue.

The concept of layers seemed to be completely out of my beginner’s reach. He was creating layers without knowing it. He was trying to edit layers with tools that Photoshop Elements doesn’t allow. Each time this happened I had to get him back to the layer he wanted to edit.

I think of this as an ongoing exercise that will be repeated and refined. I’ll present a progress report when one is warranted. I’d like your feedback and experience with young ones and teaching Photoshop. Any grade school teachers out there trying this?

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Keywords: Star Wars, Teaching, Padawan, beginner, Photoshop Elements

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