"Photoshop or Illustrator?" It's the one question that all new digital artists ask themselves before they start creating, and the answer depends on many factors. Illustrator works with vectors, whereas Photoshop works with pixels, which may be more suitable for artists who want to emulate traditional media such as pencil on paper or paint on canvas.

In this six-course Basics, Mexican illustrator Gemma Román teaches you to use the illustration tools in Photoshop, make and edit simple illustrations, and create your own library of resources while familiarizing you with commonly used artistic terminology.

Start by taking a tour of the software, from installation and configuration to creating a new document, and explore the workspace, the tools, the layer panel, and additional resources.

In the second course, get an introduction to the tools for sketching, drawing, and outlining. Check out the preset brushes and create your own to start illustrating with them. Learn how to scan your hand-drawn sketches into Photoshop and discover the selection tools to edit your sketches and use vectors.

The third course is all about color. Take a tour of the color library, the Eyedropper, and basic concepts such as hue, saturation, luminosity, and temperature. Learn to adjust and edit the color of your strokes, organize the values, and create color palettes.

In the fourth course, it's time to paint...without getting your hands dirty! Discover the tools that Photoshop has to offer and fill your drawings with color using the Paint Bucket, Gradients, strokes and textures, blending modes, and filters, as well as brushes for a manual approach.

The fifth course of this Basics focuses on the final touch-ups of your illustrations. Discover a series of tools like Sharpen, Blur, and Smudge, then focus on lighting to bring your illustrations to life. Make some of the more important components stand out by playing with color and create seamless patterns.

To tie everything together, learn how to optimize your files according to how you are going to export them. Look at how to create final artwork for professional or home printing, then export your illustrations in different digital formats, from a website or a PDF to an image for social media.

Technical requirements

⦁ A computer with Windows 10 or macOS 10.12 Sierra (or later). ⦁ Adobe Photoshop CC (you can buy it or download the 7-day trial version on the Adobe website). ⦁ A graphics tablet.