Need advice of professional graphic designers

I have asked this question before but still confused, actually i work on photoshop and now i want to become fulltime graphic designer, i am creative, i have ideas, i have sense of designing but problem is i don't know the market, i dont know the applications, i dont know which tools i should go for apart from photoshop. I get confuse when i go to institutes, they have illustrator, corel, freehand and so many things.

When i say i want to be full time designer so that means i must know how to use those applications for web, and print as well.

Can anyone advice me please.

Thanks

 

Learning Illustrator and In Design (if you want to design print jobs, brochures and such) is crucial!

Online free tutorials are a great way to learn these apps.
Good luck.

 

If you are proficient in Photoshop, then it alone is enough for web development.

But its better if you have knowledge of Flash and some programming language, probably PHP, as it is easier to learn and is an open-source, for dynamic programming.

Dreamweaver is an excellent tool for dynamic web development and also offers ease of use.

 

lies.... don't let the poor kid do that to himself. ease of use comes with experience. clean, optimised, and valid markup is important in the industry today and should be left to such things as dreamweaver which mass produce the worst crap ever.

i don't blame the software it does what it was meant to do. but i do blame the people who use it. because of it being a point-and-click solution to web development, people don't take the time to actually learn what it is that they are doing. personally i would suggest something such as edit plus, or notepad++, or something along those lines. at least this way you will be learning what it is that you're doing instead of clicking buttons.

 

alrighty, I've already gone through College for Graphic Design, and my cousin who lives with me is currently attending the program.

The advice here is valid and pretty rock solid.

Knowing photoshop doesn't make you a graphic designer: it makes you a photographer. Photoshop is a WONDERFUL tool, but it's pupose is photographic manipulation. Yes, it CAN be used for web design, but that's why Adobe created Fireworks (which is specifically FOR web design, and once you've used Fireworks for web design you'll never want to go near photoshop again)

To be a designer you need to learn skills, and I'm not takling software skills (although those certainly do help).

you need to learn Vector graphics editing (like you would do in Adobe Illustrator, or the free Inkscape.org)
you need to learn multi-page layout, but not before you get there, just to be sucessful (like inDesign)
you need to learn HTML and CSS (you can write these in Dreamweaver, but you don't NEED dreamweaver to writ them. Don't rely on dreamweaver to make websites, learn how they are actually made by hand, and use a program like Notepad++, jEdit, Smultron or Eclipse to edit your code. In fact, Eclipse offers everything Dreamweaver has for free, just download that and save some money )

The Adobe Creative suite is the industry standard, and there are other excellent tools out there, but if you choose another tool besides the standard, you still have to know the standard or you're useless to anybody else out there.

The Adobe Creative suite is expensive, but you truly do get what you pay for - it is expertly written software that does excellent job at what it's designed to do. You can get it for a bargain price once you have your student number and qualify for student pricing. Get it while you can when it's cheap, because once you're done school you have to pay full-price.

Also, it's one thing to pirate when you're not doing anything professional, but the moment you start to do anything professional with your software, using pirated software can END you.

 

Thanks all of you for your great suggestions, my main point is to learn graphic designing for print actually because i have been using photoshop from long time but to be honest i really think e learning and tutorials are not good like a professional teacher and i am planning to get classes for these.

I liked the idea of illustrator but i really want to be a good designer.

About Web, so I never use dW , i am a Frontpage guy, but ur guys are right, self coding is always better than FP and DW.

I will appreciatte more suggestions. So far i think i will start learning Illustrator and advance photoshop skills.

Regards

 

So true...I was naive and decided to try my hand with Dreamweaver and totally crashed and burned later on down the road...

 

very nice advise there inovati ........ really great to read from different perspectives of people on this matter, knowing photoshop isnt everything, as there are lots of other tools that provide similar or even better solutions for different tasks ....