CSPD 322 Photoshop II

Photoshop II covers more tips and techniques in color correction, retouching, montaging, and image manipulation using destructive and non destructive techniques. Students will work with selections, brushes, layers, masks, blending modes, and more to dramatically improve their images. Best practices in image optimization for web and email will be explored, along with digital asset management and exporting files for use in Adobe Creative Cloud applications.

Prerequisite: CSPD 300 Photoshop I or equivalent experience

Bonus: experience with drawing, painting, color theory, design, sculpture, photography, light & shadow, psychology of art & human emotions, art therapy, and how the Universe works will be to your benefit :)

Recommended materials/supplies: students should bring a notebook and pen/pencils, as well as a USB Flash drive to transfer digital files to & from class.

Food & Drink: students are encouraged to bring food and drink to class. We'll have a break during our sessions. Local restaurants are limited and campus vending machines are, well, vending machines… loaded with who knows what? Bring drinks, dinner & snacks, it's all good :)

Adobe Trivia: Illustrator and Photoshop are siblings, with Illustrator being the big sister and Photoshop the little brother (Illustrator was a 1987 Adobe creation/release with Botticelli's Venus as it's icon (female) and Photoshop as an acquisition by the Knoll brothers (Thomas & John, both males) in the late 1980s. (Thomas Knoll is still involved with the development of Photoshop and John Knoll is Chief Creative Officer at Industrial Light & Magic for Lucasfilm, LTD.) Adobe thought Photoshop would be second to Illustrator, but they were mistaken – Photoshop took off and proved to be the more popular of the two applications due to it's unique capabilities in manipulating photographs (bitmap images). Both applications work extremely well together in being able to produce vector graphics & raster images (bitmaps) for artists, designers, photographers and other creatives around the world.

InDesign was the late comer into the Adobe family in 2000, an acquisition from Aldus in 1994 (formerly Aldus PageMaker, then Adobe PageMaker – aka RageMaker among designers and pre-press technicians due to the multiple work-arounds needed in order to print the digital files correctly) and is viewed as a baby sister to the two older siblings. Adobe released InDesign 2 in 2002 and in an interview with an Adobe representative I was asked what I thought of the new version (since version 1 had numerous issues). I excitedly answered, "It's Adobe Illustrator on page layout steroids!" InDesign has many of the same capabilities Illustrator does, with it's strength in being able to layout multi-page documents and process type (lots of type!) effortlessly.

Schedule at a glance (subject to revision)

January

February

March

April

May

Inspirational Things

What are you looking at?

Since we don't live in a void, we must be looking at things around us. These things we look at influence us one way or the other, good or bad. The things that interest us may include audio, visuals, written words, news, events, etc. They are the things of our World that inspire us to be who we are. These things feed our minds and souls, give us hope and take it away, amuse us and anger us. These things make us feel something, which lead us to think about… things!

Click here to share your inspirational things.

We're looking at (listening to, reading, etc.)…

In the Beginning, There Was Photoshop

Create by Adobe – Adobe's online creative magazine

Julieanne Kost's Blog – Adobe Photoshop & Lightroom evangelist

Elizabeth Gilbert: Your Elusive Creative Genius – video, 19:09
Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person "being" a genius, all of us "have" a genius. It's a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.

Kyle's Brushes – incredible brushes by Kyle Webster

Ron's Brushes – more incredible brushes for Photoshop

NASA: On the Typography of Flight Deck Documentation – PDF 1.6 MB

20 Things To Remember If You Love A Highly Creative Person – share this link with your non-creative loved one to help explain why you are the way you are.

Weekly Projects

Reason to Create: Exploration & Exploitation of Adobe Photoshop

Due: weekly

Project Brief: What will you explore in Adobe Photoshop?

Everyone is here to learn more about Adobe Photoshop and has their own interests they may wish to pursue. We'll be discussing weekly topics and you can work with those ideas and techniques during the week, exploring and experimenting to see how they can improve your image making skills. Bring your works to our following class for critique and opportunity for all to learn more :)

Project Parameters:

• Anything goes – be inventive :)
• File Properties – best practice to work at 300 ppi resolution and in RGB color mode to take full advantage of Adobe Photoshop

Bring your master PSD files to our next class for additional processing and critique.

• How To Be Creative | Off Book | PBS Digital Studios
  Creativity has always been essential for our cultural growth, but there are still many misconceptions about this elusive process.
• Photoshop Help / Save and export
• Photoshop Help / File formats
• Photoshop Help / Workspace
• Photoshop Help / Workspace basics
• Photoshop Help / Tool galleries
• Photoshop Help / Use tools
• Photoshop Help / Default keyboard shortcuts
• Photoshop Help / Preferences

Week 2

• Photoshop Help / Key Concepts / Selections
• Photoshop Help / Move, copy and delete selected pixels
• Photoshop Help / Adjust pixel selections
• Photoshop Help / Manage layers and groups
• Photoshop Help / Bounding box
• Photoshop Help / Color modes
• Photoshop Help / Key Concepts / Color mode or image mode

Week 3

• Photoshop Help / Key Concepts / Selections
• Photoshop Help / About color
• Photoshop Help / Choosing colors
• Photoshop Help / Choose colors in Color and Swatches panels

Week 4–6

• Photoshop Help / Levels adjustment
• Photoshop Help / Curves adjustment
• Photoshop Help / Adjust hue and saturation
• Photoshop Help / Convert a color image to black and white
• Photoshop Help / Dodge or burn image areas

Week 7

• Photoshop Help / Nondestructive editing
• Photoshop Help / Work with Smart Objects
• Photoshop Help / Apply Smart Filters
• Photoshop Help / Draw with the Pen tools
• Photoshop Help / Draw shapes
• Photoshop Help / Edit paths
• Photoshop Help / Add color to paths
• Photoshop Help / Fill and stroke selections, layers and paths
• Photoshop Help / Manage paths

Week 8

• Photoshop Help / Draw with the Pen tools

Week 10–11

• GIF Pronunciation – The Graphics Interchange Format or GIF was developed in 1987 by Steve Wilhite while working at CompuServe, the first United States commercial online service. The creators of the format pronounced the word as jif with a soft G as in gin. Wilhite claims the intended pronunciation deliberately echoed the peanut butter brand Jif®, and CompuServe employees would say "Choosy developers choose GIF", spoofing Jif's television commercials. GIF is also pronounced with a hard G as in gift. Both pronunciations are accepted by the industry, so there's no need to argue about it anymore :)
• Dissecting Animated GIFs – Open & inspect animated GIFs in Adobe Photoshop –  use the Layer panel to see the layer structure and the Timeline panel to view the frame sequence and duration
• Masks & Layers – Layer masks can animated (be sure to break the link between the layer & mask thumbnails in the Layers panel) and layers with color, blending modes, opacity and more can be used for creating incredible special effects
• Flipbooks – An early animation method mechanized
• File Formats – JPG, PNG & GIF are the digital image file formats used for web graphics. They compress images into smaller packages for distribution to devices. GIF is the only format of the three that offers animation.
• Saving Animated GIFs – Adobe Photoshop can save files in the Compuserve GIF format and can export in the GIF format, but these are not animated GIFs. To save an animated GIF, use the menu, File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy)… or Command + Option + Shift + S (PC: Control + Alt + Shift + S) and select GIF from the optimized file format menu located at the top right of the window. Note: Save for Web… (and its variations) is under the File menu in earlier versions of Photoshop. This is a leftover from Adobe Imageready, Adobe's web graphic preparation app and the code behind it is outdated and no longer being developed in favor of new technologies.
• File Size & the Web – Simply put, smaller is faster & better. The game is to get the best looking image at the smallest file size so it downloads quickly to devices. 21st Century attention spans are short and the audience may not wait for a large download and click-through to another site, missing your beautiful contribution to the art world :(
• Photoshop Help / Create frame animations
• Photoshop Help / Create animated GIFs – tutorial
• Photoshop Help / Video and animation overview
• Photoshop Help / Color modes see Indexed Color mode