Adobe Photoshop Introduction
Course Outline
Beginners Level
Photoshop is the industry standard photographic-editing software. At its most basic (and non-invasive), it is used for resizing, converting and reformatting photographic images. But its real strength lies in creating powerful visual
enhancements and special photographic effects.
Useful to you if:
you need to open, amend or correct any photographic images at a basic level, or if you need to enhance photographic images at a basic level and on a regular basis.
Before the course, you:
- should be able to navigate your desktop/system and be familiar with basic universal functions such as “Save”, “Quit” etc.;
- need no prior experience of Photoshop.
At the end of the day’s course you will:
- have produced a house-ad, web gallery and duotone photograph, and repaired a photograph;
- be comfortable with bitmap and resolution principles;
- know some essential keyboard shortcuts and procedures to improve workflow;
Course contents (may vary slightly):
Basics
- General preferences
- Bitmap vs vector, common file formats
- Interpolation, resolution and quality issues
- Import percentages (maximum)
- Viewing/opening documents, browsing
- Title bar info, new document specifications
- Colour models
- Tools and Palettes
- Tool bar, variations
- Options bar (introduction)
- Most commonly used palettes
- Palette options
- Editing tools vs vector tools
- Rulers, guides and grids
- Using control
- Image
- Image sizes (handout)
- Image size vs canvas size
- Cropping (and resizing), plus manual
- Image modes
- Basic retouching with clone, heal, patch tools
- Colour adjustment
- Basic tonal adjustment/enhancement
- Brightness/contrast: when to use levels (+ auto), shadow/highlight
- ‘Quality’ adjustment
- Dust and scratches, reduce noise
- Blur, gaussian blur
- Sharpen/unsharpen, and size issues
- Transformation
- Flipping, scaling, rotating, distorting, perspective
- Control options
- Free transform, straighten or tilt
- Brushes
- Brush options and parameters
- Brush size and hardness
Selections
- Various tools, tool options
- Adding/subtracting
- Inversing, feathering, grow, smooth, expand, similar
- Moving, transforming
- Show/hide
- Pen tool specifics
- Shape tools, options
- Selecting a path, show/hide, active/inactive
- Saving, clipping
- Paths to selections
- Layers
- Background v layer, creating layers
- Preserving data
- Re-arranging
- Hiding, locking/unlocking
- Naming, deleting
- Layer opacity
- Type
- Rasterised vs character, selecting and editing
- Formatting palettes
- Fill and stroke
- Type on a path
- Workflow
- Automating contact sheets
- Automating batches
- Saving the workspace
- Navigation, using guides and info
- Saving
- Save options, file formats for inDesign, web etc
- Paths to Illustrator
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Project achievements:
- House ad/poster
- Web gallery
- Duotone photograph
- Repaired photograph