I've been wanting to get into graphic design for a few months now because I see there's freelance work on Fiverr and Upwork. The problem is I don't know where to start: whether to learn Canva first, then move on to Photoshop, or jump straight into Figma since that's what I see they're asking for. Has anyone done this and can tell me which path worked for them?
I wouldn't start with Canva because you'll get used to tools that are way too limited, and then jumping to real programs is frustrating. Go straight to Figma if you're looking to work on freelance platforms, because that's what's most in demand right now and it has a friendlier learning curve than Photoshop; there's tons of free tutorials on YouTube and the interface is pretty intuitive. You can save Photoshop for later if at some point you need to edit photos or do more specific stuff, but honestly a lot of people working on Upwork/Fiverr get by just fine with Figma and a simple raster editor when needed.
I started backwards from what a lot of people say! I jumped into Photoshop because I had it lying around, and it was horrible at first, but that's exactly what forced me to really learn the fundamentals of layers, masks, and all that stuff you use everywhere after. What I can tell you is you don't need to master Photoshop before moving on to Figma, those are pretty different worlds: one is for editing and retouching, the other is for interface design and layouts. If what you want is to land work fast on those platforms, go straight into Figma and YouTube, there's tons of free tutorials that teach you from scratch, and in a couple of months you've got a portfolio. Canva is useful later on, once you already understand concepts like white space and typography, but not as a first step.
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