Photoshop edits pixels. A phone photograph or a scan of a label is a grid of coloured dots, and Photoshop is where a designer cuts the product out, cleans it up and corrects its colour without losing the original underneath. It is the wrong home for some jobs. A logo belongs in Illustrator, where shapes stay sharp at any size, and a forty-page catalogue belongs in InDesign, which is built for pages and long runs of text.
This module is for a designer who has never opened Photoshop, or has only opened it by accident, and it covers the eight things a working week asks of it. This lesson starts with the screen. Then come layers and masks, so that nothing you do is permanent, followed by selections and cutouts that survive a close look and by retouching a product photograph honestly. After that it covers adjustment layers for colour and light, Generative Fill and the Firefly models with their real costs, and type with smart objects and exporting. The last lesson takes one phone photograph of No. 4's amber bottle and turns it into a 4:5 post and a story, one decision at a time.
As of October 2026 the current release is Photoshop 27.11, which Adobe shipped in September. You can buy it three ways. Photoshop on its own is a single app plan, the Photography (1 TB) plan adds Lightroom and a terabyte of cloud storage, and Creative Cloud Pro gives more than twenty apps with Firefly included. Adobe's FAQ says every Photoshop plan also includes Photoshop on the web and on the iPad, and you can sign in on two computers, though only one of them can use the apps at a time.
Adobe India offers a 7-day free trial. Billing starts on day 8, and the trial page says you can cancel within 14 days of that for a full refund. Since the September release there is a free way in as well. You download Photoshop, sign in with just an email address and use the Firefly Image Editor inside it, with a daily allowance of free AI generations. Check the rupee price on Adobe India's plans page before you pay.
Most of Adobe's AI features run on , and the number your plan includes matters as much as the price. Adobe's generative credits FAQ, as read in October 2026, gives a Photoshop single app plan bought on or after 17 June 2025 just 25 credits a month. Plans bought before that date keep 500. Photography (1 TB) includes 1,000, and Creative Cloud Pro includes 4,000 for premium features with unlimited use of standard ones. Standard features, such as Generative Fill with Adobe's own Firefly models, use 1 credit a time. Some cost more. Harmonize takes 5 a go and Enhance edge, the new cleaner for cutout edges, takes 20. Credits reset each month on the day your plan started, and unused ones do not carry over.
Photoshop opens on the Home screen, where New file starts a blank document and Open finds one on your computer. Once a file is open, five parts of the screen are worth naming. The Application bar holds the menus and a workspace switcher. The Tools panel holds every tool, grouped by what it does, and the shows the settings of whichever tool is active, so it changes every time you switch. Panels such as Layers and Properties can be grouped or stacked to suit the way you work. The floats on the canvas itself and offers the likely next step for what you have selected, and it is where Generative Fill, Generative Expand and Remove background appear.
Since the August 2026 update Photoshop also has a second way to work. The AI Assisted Editor, still in beta, hides most panels and keeps a prompt bar on screen, and Adobe's own FAQ says it is aimed at people new to Photoshop. The full program is called the . A toggle at the top left of the canvas switches between the two. The assisted mode works on a flattened copy of your image, and when you switch back your changes arrive in the Pro Editor as one new generative layer.
Worked example
Your first session, set up so nothing can be lost
- 01Start the 7-day trial from Adobe India's Photoshop page, or download Photoshop and sign in with an email for the free tier.The trial opens the full Pro Editor. The free tier, added in September 2026, gives the Firefly Image Editor and a daily allowance of AI generations, which is enough to look around.
- 02If Photoshop opens in the AI Assisted Editor, use the toggle at the top left of the canvas to switch to the Pro Editor.Every lesson after this one works in the Pro Editor, where layers and masks are visible. To remove the toggle altogether, untick Show AI Assisted Editor under Preferences > Interface.
- 03On the Home screen choose Open and pick a photograph from your phone, ideally a product on a table by a window.A real photograph with real faults teaches more than a sample file, and the later lessons fix exactly those faults.
- 04Choose File > Save As, pick Photoshop as the format and put the date in the name, such as no4-bottle-2026-10-09.psd.The phone JPEG stays untouched as your original, and the PSD keeps every layer you add from now on.
- 05Open Window > History, choose Create New Snapshot and name it Original.A snapshot holds the whole image as it is now until you close the file, so you can return to it after fifty steps.
- 06Click five different tools in the Tools panel and watch the Options bar change with each.Each tool keeps its own settings there. When a tool does something you did not expect, look at the Options bar first.
- 07Paint a rough stroke anywhere, press Command-Z or Ctrl-Z to remove it, then add Shift to the same keys to bring it back.Knowing how to step back is what makes it safe to try things.
- 08Open the Generative Credits Usage panel at the top right of the Photoshop window, or your Account menu, and write down how many credits your plan gives you this month.A single app plan bought since 17 June 2025 gets 25 a month, so know the number before you press Generate.
What to do it with
- PhotoshopSubscription
Still the place a picture is finished. Generative fill, expand and remove now sit on the same layer stack as everything else.
Bad at Generative fill matches its surroundings rather than obeying a brief, so it is a patching tool and not a directing one.
- LightroomSubscription
Raw processing, colour and a catalogue, with masks that find skies and people by themselves.
Bad at Its denoise and its presets pull everything towards a current look, and that look dates.
The words, in plain language
- Options bar
- The strip that shows the settings of whichever tool is active. It changes every time you switch tools.
- Contextual Task Bar
- A small bar that floats on the canvas and offers the likely next step for what you have selected.
- Snapshot
- A saved state of the whole image in the History panel. It lasts until you close the file.
- PSD
- Photoshop's own file format. It keeps layers, masks and adjustments as separate parts you can change later.
- Generative credits
- The monthly allowance that Adobe's AI features draw on. The number depends on your plan.
- Pro Editor
- Adobe's name for the full Photoshop, with every panel and tool, as opposed to the AI Assisted Editor.
Why it matters
Beginners often fear that one wrong click will ruin the photograph, and with old habits it could. Learn the safety net first. Command-Z on a Mac or Ctrl-Z on Windows undoes the last step and keeps undoing, the same keys with Shift redo, and File > Revert goes back to the last save. A in the History panel holds a whole state of the image until you close the file, which makes it the right thing to take before any edit you are unsure of.
Save as a PSD, Photoshop's own format, from the first minute. A JPEG flattens everything into one picture and is compressed again every time it is saved, which Adobe's own help says can lower the quality. A PSD keeps layers, masks and adjustments as separate parts you can still change next week. It also protects AI work. Every press of Generate makes a new generative layer, and only a layered format such as PSD keeps that layer as a layer.
The credit numbers should help decide which plan you buy. Twenty-five credits buys twenty-five standard fills a month, or one Enhance edge and five fills, which is enough to learn the tools but runs out fast on client work. A designer who expects to fill, expand and clean up product photographs every week is better served by the 1,000 credits in Photography (1 TB), or by Creative Cloud Pro if Illustrator and InDesign are needed too. The Remove tool is the exception. Adobe's features page says it currently uses no credits at all.
There are two sensible views on where a beginner should start. One says start in the assisted mode, because typing what you want gets a first result in seconds and keeps you going long enough to care. The other says start in the Pro Editor, because every AI result lands as a layer, often with a mask, and somebody who cannot read a layer cannot fix what the machine got nearly right. This module takes the second view. The prompt bar is quick to pick up once layers make sense, and layers come next.
Elsewhere
- Type
- technique
- Period
- contemporary