CS6 Design Bootcamp

Audience:

The Adobe CS6 Design Bootcamp is targeted at those who are new to the CS6 Design suite and looking to learn the basics of working with Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator.

The Instructors:

Our CS6 instructors all have years of experience working with Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator in a professional capacity and have all attained Adobe Certified Expert and Adobe Certified Instructor status.

The Prerequisites:

This course is a beginners training course. You should however be comfortable using a computer to perform functions such as copy and paste, and opening applications and files. You should also be comfortable using the internet, for example for browsing and interacting with websites.

Day One and Two:

- Exploring Photoshop 
- The panels 
- The tools 
- Preferences

Creating Documents:

- Settings 
- Resolution 
- Colour modes 
- Web vs Print 
- Mobile/tablet settings 
- Presets

Colour Theory:
- RGB 
- CMYK 
- Printing colour 
- Web colour

Brushes: 
- Size 
- Shape 
- Options 
- Custom brushes

Layers: 
- Creating 
- Organising 
- Using 
- Blending modes

Adjustment tools:
- Dodge tool 
- Burn tool 
- Sponge tool 
- Blur tool 
- Sharpen tool 
- Smudge tool

Adjustment commands:
- Brightness and Contrast 
- Levels 
- Curves 
- Others 
- Adjustment layers 
- Auto adjustments

Selections: 
- Selection tools 
- Making selections 
- Adjusting your selections 
- Saving your selections 
- Channels

Cropping: 
- Cropping images 
- Cropping options 
- Perspective cropping

Layer Masks:
- Making layer masks 
- Editing layer masks 
- Using layer masks

Cloning and Repairing: 
- The clone tool 
- The Healing brush tool 
- The Spot healing brush tool 
- The patch tool 
- Content aware options 
- Content aware Move 
- Content aware patch

Text:
- Adding text 
- Formatting text

Shapes:
- Vector layers 
- Shapes 
- Custom shapes

Effects:
- Layer effects 
- Effect options

Day Three and Four:
Introduction 
- What is Desktop Publishing 
- Why InDesign 
- What you will learn

InDesign Interface:
- Overview of the interface 
- Creating customised Workspaces 
- Organising Panels 
- Customising Menus 
- Changing Default Settings

Document Creation: 
- Creating a New Document 
- Bleed, Slug and Margins 
- Facing Pages 
- Columns and Gutter

Frames and Shapes: 
- What are frames 
- Creating frames 
- Moving frames 
- Aligning frames 
- Sizing and positioning 
- Rounded corners 
- Anchoring frames 
- Rotating and skewing 
- Creating frames from text

Working with Text:
- Creating text frames 
- Using placeholder text 
- Inserting special characters 
- Glyphs 
- Threading text frames 
- Viewing threads 
- The Story Editor 
- Text frame options, inset spacing etc.. 
- Hyphenation 
- Importing from Word

Formatting Text: 
- Leading 
- Kerning & tracking 
- Drop caps 
- Baseline shift 
- Justification & Alignment 
- Uppercase, lowercase, sentence case & title case 
- Indents 
- Bullets 
- Formatting Bullets

Working with Objects:
- Grouping and ungrouping 
- Change object shape 
- Rotating a spread 
- Arranging objects 
- Layers Panel

Images: 
- Using mini bridge 
- Different file formats 
- Placing images 
- Frame Fitting Options 
- Text wrap options 
- Resizing and positioning images 
- Select v direct select 
- Content Grabber (and how to turn it off) 
- Display performance 
- Clipping paths

Layout: 
- Creating layouts 
- Guides and smart guides 
- The gap tool 
- Liquid Layout 
- Alternate Layout 
- Using the page tool 
- Live distribute 
- Merging frames 
- Compound shapes

Masters and Pages: 
- Working with masters 
- Creating masters 
- Importing masters 
- Applying masters 
- Master options 
- Page numbering 
- Numbering and sections 
- Text threads in masters

Colours: 
- Understanding Colours: CMYK, RGB, Pantone etc.. 
- Creating colours 
- Saving colours as swatches 
- Sampling colors from images 
- Exporting and importing colours 
- Applying colours to strokes and fills 
- Creating gradients 
- Saving gradients as swatches 
- Applying gradients to items

Gradient Feather: 
- Applied to what? 
- Linear v radial 
- Angle and location

Tables: 
- Creating a new table 
- Convert text to table 
- Strokes and fills 
- Alternating row and column strokes 
- Adding rows and columns 
- Deleting rows and columns 
- Merge and unmerge

Other Effects:
- Applied to what? 
- Drop & Inner Shadow 
- Inner & Outer Glow 
- Bevel and Emboss 
- Satin 
- Transparency

Basic Styles:
- Character styles 
- Paragraph styles 
- Style Priority 
- Creating styles 
- Applying and removing styles 
- Overrides 
- Redefining styles 
- Importing Styles 
- Removing unused styles 
- Nested Styles

Preflighting: 
- Why preflighting 
- Detecting errors 
- Identify & correct errors 
- Custom profiles

Output:
- Packaging all files 
- PDF Presets (print ready, small size etc.) 
- Including printers marks / bleed 
- Compression 
- Export to interactive PDF 
- Page transitions (eg: fade, blind, etc.)

Hands on Lab:
During the course delegates will complete hands on exercises at each stage. On day 2 we also undertake one large final project bringing together all of the skills covered during the course. This approach gives delegates the opportunity to embed the skills, ask questions and clarify areas of uncertainty before leaving the classroom.

Day Five:
Illustrator overview 
- What are vectors 
- What are Bézier curves 
- The pen tools

Creating shapes:
- The pen tool 
- Primitive shapes 
- Adding/deleting anchor points 
- Creating Bézier curves 
- Combining shapes 
- Creating outlines from text 
- The shape builder tool 
- The blend tool

Editing shapes: 
- Adjusting existing shapes 
- Cutting paths 
- Combining paths and shapes 
- Erasing paths and shapes

Organising your work:
- Artboards 
- Custom artboards 
- Layers 
- Sub-layers 
- Layer properties 
- Templates 
- Group Isolation mode

Colour:
- Choosing a colour 
- Using swatches 
- Saving your swatches 
- Spot colours 
- Process colours 
- Global colours

Stroke and fill:
- Creating strokes 
- Creating fill 
- Applying colour to strokes and fills

Transforming shapes:
- Duplicating 
- Moving, rotating 
- Reflecting, Shearing 
- Scaling 
- Step and repeat 
- Transform again

Effects:
- 3D 
- Stylize 
- Distort & Transform 
- Warp 
- Organising your effects

Text: 
- Adding text 
- Text within a a shape 
- Text on a shape 
- Controlling text 
- Creating outlines from text

Saving and Exporting:
- Saving options 
- Exporting options 
- Exporting to pdf 
- Other export formats 
- Using Illustrator with other applications


Previous Feedback From Our Creative Suite Courses:

We thought you might like to know what some past delegates thought of our Creative Suite courses:

"Very clear and extremely patient. Alex would always relate back to your specific needs ie.fashion design" - Design Manager, Marks and Spencer

"Alex was a very good instructor, he had excellent knowledge and was always quick to provide assistance." - Senior Support Officer, Basic Skills Agency

"Very knowledgable and passionate about the subject. Definitely a user not just an instructor" - Analyst, Jones Lang Lasalle

"Knows his subject very well and obviously uses the program on a daily basis, not just for teaching. Very approachable and eager to help with misunderstandings." - Medical Photographer, NHS