Photoshop
Dates - Held all year. Please use contact for information.
Workshop Fee - $550
This is a comprehensive three-day course designed to show the participant how to get the best out of the images taken, significantly improving them to add drama, make them “pop”, or just to make it a beautiful image. The versatility and capability of Adobe Photoshop is a powerful tool to accomplish a wealth of improvements and modifications. This workshop will get the participant, not only introduced to, but deep into the workings of Photoshop, in a way to make it clear what it is, how to use it, what the process is to generate a final image, and when and how to approach more complicated techniques.
This three-day workshop will gently lead you into the world of Adobe Photoshop and demonstrate the process for improving your images going step by step towards more complex capabilities. Photoshop consists of three programs, namely Bridge, the RAW Window, and Photoshop itself, which is the main and largest program with the most detailed and powerful capabilities. The workshop opens with what the camera provides as a digital image and its associated metadata. Downloading image files from the camera to the computer is discussed, especially file management including where to file the originals, organizing and naming them. Bridge and the RAW Window, and their purpose and capabilities, are presented and demonstrated. The image is then opened in Photoshop.
It is in Photoshop that the real work of image enhancement and/or modification is made. We demonstrate how layers are used on the overall image to make global adjustments of tonal range, contrast, color balance, saturation and more. Corrections to the image, such as removing spots or unsightly elements, can be made with cloning and healing tools. Perspective can be modified and white balance corrected. The various methods of selecting a part of the image are shown and when to use them. Then layers and masks are again used for that selection to get local improvements such as burning and dodging, local tonal controls, blending this selection in with the rest of the image, and more. Numerous tools and techniques are presented and shown how they can be used. Special capabilities and techniques for image modification that will be presented include: panoramas, high dynamic range images (those that exceed the range of the camera’s sensor), image techniques that increase depth of field, use of the Lab color profile, gradients, photo filters and specialized and customized masks, converting to black and white, adding text, and the basics of compositing. After saving the final image we examine the setup for printing including image sizing, sharpening the image, and the need for color profiles and the effects of and on different types of papers.
There will be a field trip locally to provide the opportunity to capture some images here in scenic New Mexico, and selected ones will be used to show what can be done to improve them with Photoshop. A group dinner the first night (cost of the dinner is not included) is followed by an evening session wherein there will be a showing of digital prints and discussion of how they were taken and processed.