Adobe Photoshop CC – Essentials Training Course vs Adobe Illustrator CC – Advanced Training

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.

Covers the full advanced Illustrator toolset — pen tool mastery, complex paths, advanced typography, colour theory, logo design, packaging, pattern design, and complex illustration workflows. The curriculum is dense without being padded; reviewers describe it as genuinely comprehensive for the intermediate-to-advanced level. The main gap is limited coverage of screen-first digital workflows (UI, web) relative to the depth given to print and vector.

Daniel Walter Scott is an Adobe Certified Instructor and Adobe Certified Expert with over 16 years of design experience. His teaching is praised across thousands of reviews as crystal clear, professionally paced, and attentive to the edge cases where learners get stuck. The Adobe certification is not cosmetic — it translates into accurate, current, and authoritative instruction on the tool.

Priced at $19.99 on frequent Udemy sale (the effective purchase price for nearly all students) for a comprehensive advanced course with real-world projects and lifetime access. At sale price this is the strongest value-per-hour advanced design course available on any major platform. Full list price ($100+) is never what anyone pays, which matters for how you should think about the Udemy pricing model.

Multiple real-world projects throughout — logo design, packaging mock-ups, pattern systems, complex vector illustration — rather than isolated exercises. Reviewers describe finishing the course with a small body of work they can use in a portfolio. Some exercises feel more like skill-drills than finished pieces, but the balance across the curriculum is strong.

The skills covered — pen tool precision, colour systems, typography workflows, file structure for print — are what working graphic designers and illustrators use daily. Reviewers in professional design roles describe the course as directly applicable to client work. The print and vector orientation limits applicability for UI/UX designers whose primary output is screen-first.