Adobe Photoshop CC – Essentials Training Course vs The Beginner's Guide to Adobe After Effects

28+ hours of video covering selection tools, masking, retouching, compositing, typography, colour adjustments, and web and print workflows — enough breadth to take a true beginner through to confident intermediate work. Updated January 2025 to reflect the current Photoshop CC interface. Capped at 4.6 because a handful of reviewers noted pacing inconsistencies between sections and limited coverage of advanced compositing techniques like frequency separation or channel masking.

Daniel Walter Scott holds both Adobe Certified Instructor (ACI) and Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) credentials and runs Bring Your Own Laptop (BYOL), a dedicated Adobe training platform. Reviewers consistently describe him as enthusiastic, clear, and well-matched in pace to complete beginners. The fractional deduction reflects occasional feedback that the delivery can feel slightly over-cheerful, and that advanced learners find the hand-holding unnecessary.

At Udemy sale prices of $12–15 — which occur several times per month — for 28+ hours of content with lifetime access and future updates, the value proposition is very strong. The ceiling is that the list price is artificially inflated, and a small minority of learners paid nearer the full rate and felt the experience did not match the premium positioning.

Projects span logo design, poster creation, social media graphics, and photo retouching — real-world artefacts rather than contrived exercises. Each project ships with downloadable starter assets. The limitation is Udemy's Q&A-only feedback loop: no peer review and no instructor critique of individual submissions. You produce work but receive no evaluation unless you post in the discussion board and happen to get a response.

Covers the workflows a junior designer or freelancer actually uses: masking, smart objects, retouching, layer styles, and basic compositing. Several learners noted they applied skills from the course in paid client work within weeks. The ceiling: the course stops before advanced techniques like 3D, complex channel masking, and Lightroom integration.

34 lessons across approximately 5 hours cover the After Effects workspace, composition, keyframing, masks, shape layers, text animation, and effects in a logical build. Reviewers consistently describe the progression as genuinely systematic — each lesson builds directly on the previous one rather than jumping between topics. The main gap is that the course ends where intermediate motion design begins; no expressions, no rigging.

Jake Bartlett has been teaching After Effects since 2013 and has 30+ courses on Skillshare. The dominant praise is that he explains *why* you are doing each step, not just the button sequence to press. Students consistently describe his instruction as gap-filling — knowledge they had been missing about AE falls into place quickly. Pacing is brisk but never rushed.

Covered under a standard Skillshare membership ($168/year or first month free trial). For the breadth and quality of 34 lessons of motion design instruction, the value-per-lesson under a membership is excellent. The caveat is that After Effects itself requires a separate Creative Cloud subscription ($55+/month), which is the real cost of learning the tool.

The single final project — a 'Taco Tuesday' arcade-style animation — is fun and motivating as a through-line. Reviewers enjoy completing it and find it a coherent showcase of the skills covered. It is, however, a playful exercise rather than a professional portfolio showpiece; its game-show aesthetic does not translate directly into a reel.

After Effects is the industry standard tool for motion graphics, broadcast, and digital content production. The foundational skills covered — layer animation, timing, masks, effects — transfer directly to real client work. Reviewers in motion design and video production describe the course skills as the exact foundation they use professionally. The gap is that the course does not reach expressions or templates, which are daily tools in professional AE workflows.