You'll hear me say it a lot; graphic design is an effective synergy of the
elements. Design is the art of the visual harmony. It's taking
independent elements and bringing them together in a design to convey the
designer's intended meaning or message.
Whatever your intended purpose as a designer; whether fulfillment or paychecks (usually both), you must understand the technical knowledge required in Photoshop to harness your creative ability to design. When you understand the technical, you can really start to unleash and exploit your creative ability as a designer.
The elements of design comes down to effectiveness (of your abilities and your project reaching it's intended goal) and the technical and creative skill to create the perfect harmony of effectiveness that you intended. It may take a while to really get to a level where you can "flow" as a graphic designer (it's like learning anything else).
If you are going to be the best you should seek out resources to help you not only master the technical skills but give you a head start on the design process itself. By getting clues into the design process itself you will be able to utilize industry-standard techniques and practices (in Photoshop) to create or recreate the designs of your vision.
The moment you take a great photograph and add a layer to it (ie. text) it becomes graphic design. You want to learn how to think and work as an 'artist'. There are many different genres of design that you'll continue to hear about and learn from. Each of these genres may specialize in certain aspects of design (ie. typography).
Commercial design is meant to inspire people to buy. Commercial graphic design has a lot to do with marketing and 'image'.
In Photoshop you use layers. These are the independent elements that you can combine with any kind of possible action (filters, masks, blending, effects, adjustments, etc.) to produce design. Throughout the First edition training program you will learn the technical skills and requirements to allow your inner creative self to soar; you must learn the tools and how to use them before you can really flex your Photoshop muscle.
Once you reach a certain level of skill, you should keep improving your design abilities and ability to take a vision or feeling and to "get it down" and end up with a finished project/design. The more committed you are to improving, the more experienced you will become in a shorter amount of time. Either way, harness the leverage of education and experience of others. In the lyrics of Neo Cortex "Join the elements".
