How Hard Is Adobe Cs4 To Learn?
Uncategorized February 8th, 2010I’m finding that the main road block in my job search for a marketing/advertising job is my lack of experience with Adobe CS4. If I buy the software, is it easy enough to teach myself? Or should I go take a class somewhere? Thanks!
February 8th, 2010 at 12:37 pm
What role are you looking at? Experience in Adobe CS is mostly a developers roles. There’s lots of other roles that wouldn’t require such comprehensive knowledge, if at all (branding jobs, digital and direct marketing roles, event marketing, researchers and analysts, PR, etc.). In smaller companies there would be a need to multi-task and a cross-over in responsibilities, in which case I could see how you would be expected to have at least a working knowledge.
Adobe CS4 comes in many combinations as it’s used in so many industries. Are you focusing on a specific aspect of the marketing/advertising industry? This would influence the skill-set you need to learn and products within the suite you should focus on.
In terms of how difficult it is to learn, it’s a pretty big product suite. Do you know any other design applications already? If you do, you can probably relate you experience and knowledge, and it’s just getting to grips with the different interface and process differences. If you don’t, it can be overwhelming to begin with. Take a structured approach rather than getting lost in everything that is possible (you’ll be there for years!). Creat a list and concentrate on tasks you want to be able to perform. I.e. how do you create and prepare an ad for print? (Setting up your artboard, bleed marks, choosing pantone colours, supplying your printer with the right information and so on.), and make sure you know how to perform these tasks.
Undoubtedly access now will help you practice, but once you get the job you’re going to have access anyway, so you might want to consider a classroom or online e-learning course that will give you a feel for the application and provide you with the foundations for the skills you need to know without the upfront investment for the entire software package.
I’d also recommend you attend one of the free Adobe roadshows. These are run pretty regularly and mostly cover updates available in the products for existing users. They’ll give you a great overview and show you how people in different roles interact with and use the applications.
Adobe CS4 is a big investment to make to secure a job. Good on you for knowing what position you want and doing whatever it takes to get it! With that sort of passion, I know you’ll convince an interview panel sooner or later.
Good luck!
February 8th, 2010 at 12:37 pm
If you want to teach yourself Adobe CS4 there are plenty of tutorials for learning it:
This website shows you how to download the Trial version of CS4 Flash to create 2D animations:http://www.baycongroup.com/flashCS4/inde…http://www.teach-ict.net/software/flash/…http://www.video-animation.com/flash_01.…http://www.instantfundas.com/2008/03/24-…
You can use a search engine like http://www.google.com to find a whole bunch of tutorials:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sourc…
YouTube has many tutorials:http://www.youtube.com/results?search_qu…
And there are many books:http://www.amazon.com/s/qid=1254353511/r…
Good luck and I hope this helps!