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Courses >
Digital Photography & Digital Video > Introduction to Photoshop CS4
 Learn
to use Adobe Photoshop CS4 to edit images, process photos, and create
original graphics. Whether you're a photographer, graphic artist, or
just want to alter old family photos, Photoshop is the program for you!
Discover the fastest and most effective ways to use Photoshop from an
expert and columnist for Photoshop User magazine (who has twice been nominated for the Photoshop Hall of Fame).
This
course will teach you how to use Photoshop with detailed, step-by-step
instructions that you'll have no trouble following--even if you've
never used a computer for graphics before!
Photoshop CS4 has a
host of impressive new features for photographers, and you'll meet a
number of them. We'll begin with an introduction to the Photoshop
environment. Next you'll learn how to create simple digital paintings.
Then you'll be editing your own photographs to remove red-eye, get rid
of dust and scratches, and correct image exposure. You'll also learn
how to switch the backgrounds on images and how to remove wrinkles and
blemishes from photos, just like they do in magazines.
By the
time you finish this fun, hands-on, project-oriented course, you'll be
well on your way to expressing yourself with the most exciting graphics
program ever developed!
Recommended Courses:
Students who enrolled in Introduction to Photoshop CS4 were also interested in the following courses:
Design Projects for Adobe Illustrator CS2
Secrets of Better Photography
Creating Web Graphics with Photoshop CS3
Introduction to Photoshop CS2
Photoshop CS3 for the Digital Photographer
Creating Web Pages
Syllabus:
A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in
a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date
for each course at least two months apart.
All courses run for six weeks, with a two-week grace period at the
end. Two lessons are released each week for the six-week duration of
the course. You do not have to be present when lessons are released.
You will have access to all lessons until the course ends. However, the
interactive discussion area that accompanies each lesson will
automatically close two weeks after the lesson is released. As such, we
strongly recommend that you complete each lesson within two weeks of
its release.
The final exam will be released on the same day as the last lesson.
Once the final exam has been released, you will have two weeks to
complete all of your course work, including the final exam.
| Week One |
| Wednesday - Lesson 01 |
Today your
journey begins. Whether you're an aspiring graphic artist or a weekend
photographer, Photoshop is an adventure that can take you places you
never dreamed. Even if you've never touched Photoshop before, you'll be
able to open, edit, and save files before this lesson ends. You'll also
learn how to download the images for the lessons.
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| Friday - Lesson 02 |
Photoshop's
painting tools are a lot of fun to use. In fact, many students say that
the brushes are Photoshop's nicest surprise. The brushes are
Photoshop's most basic tool, even if you never want to paint anything.
You'll use brushes to heal and fix images later in the course, so, in
this lesson, we'll start with just the basic Brush tool and the various
ways you can choose colors. Although no art talent is needed to use
Photoshop's smart brushes, many students discover latent art ability
that completely surprises them.
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| Week Two |
| Wednesday - Lesson 03 |
In this lesson,
you'll learn how to scroll around your image so you can more easily see
the pixels as you edit an image. You'll find out how to erase, blur,
smudge, and finger paint on your images. You'll also discover how to
recover from mistakes by using the History Brush tool.
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| Friday - Lesson 04 |
Making a black
and white image from a color one is a much sought-after skill. Today
you'll find out how it's done. You'll even learn how to add back a
little of the color to create a nice effect. Creating sepia-tone images
is another popular topic, and you'll be amazed at how easy it is in
Photoshop. In addition, we'll cover some of the tricks you can do with
the History Brush tool and history snapshots.
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| Week Three |
| Wednesday - Lesson 05 |
Photoshop needs
to be told if you want to make a major change to a specific part of an
image. In this lesson, you'll learn the critical skill of making
selections. You'll see how easy it is to isolate rectangular or
circular portions of your image so you can add a filter or change the
colors of that area. You'll also practice creating vignettes, which are
photos with an opaque center that falls off to a very soft edge. It's a
great technique to use on a portrait when you don't like the original
background. If you don't like the selection you just made, you'll get
help from the fabulous new Photoshop CS4 Refine Edges command.
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| Friday - Lesson 06 |
Photoshop has some great selection tools, but until now, all of them have had trouble selecting exactly what you had in mind. You
can see the flower, so why can't Photoshop? Today you'll learn how to
use the Lasso, Magic Wand, and Quick Selection tools as you practice
making composites by putting two images together.
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| Week Four |
| Wednesday - Lesson 07 |
This is the
lesson that makes students ask for more. It comes as a surprise to many
that you can have so much control over the performance of a brush. You
can make brushes that change color as you paint and that seem to dance
across an image. You can even create brushes that look like stitches on
a quilt and that follow the direction of your cursor. Learn to create
brushes from any section of a photo and use them as a stamp anywhere
else in your image.
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| Friday - Lesson 08 |
Gradients are
fountains of color that encompass all the colors in a blend of a
starting and an ending color. One of the current trends in photography
is to colorize areas of a photo with a gradient. You can spend hundreds
of dollars purchasing gradient-colored stock photos—or just use what
you learn in this lesson to create them yourself. Even portraits can be
much more exciting with a gradient added to them.
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| Week Five |
| Wednesday - Lesson 09 |
Whether you want
to add type to a scrapbooking layout, make large type for display, or
learn a little bit about Photoshop's Layer Styles, you'll enjoy this
lesson. You'll try your hand at making type that warps, wiggles, and
wraps around a circle. Then you'll see what you can do to text on your
own.
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| Friday - Lesson 10 |
Today you'll
learn how to size your images for printing or for the Web. You'll find
out how to scan an image so it's large enough for your needs, but not
too large, and how to crop images that have more than you really want
to see.
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| Week Six |
| Wednesday - Lesson 11 |
In
this lesson, we'll focus on the three R's of photo manipulation:
Retouching, Restoring, and Rearranging. You'll be amazed by what you
can do—and you'll understand why the phrase "pictures can't lie" is no
longer true! You'll also discover how to use the amazing Clone Stamp
panel and the new "see-through" feature on the Cone Stamp tool.
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| Friday - Lesson 12 |
Sometimes you
mean to photograph an image so it shows a yellow color cast; sometimes
you don't. In this final lesson, you'll see how to get rid of an
unintended color cast. Photoshop can't work miracles all the time, but
if you have an image that's a bit too dark or a bit too light, you can
fix it up so that it looks perfect.
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This
course includes a knowledgeable and caring instructor who will guide
you through your lessons, facilitate discussions, and answer your
questions. The instructor for this course will be Sherry London.
 Sherry
London is a noted Photoshop and Illustrator expert, an artist, a
writer, and a teacher. Her fiber art has been featured in magazines and
exhibitions. Her published works include Photoshop CS2 Gone Wild,
Photoshop Magic, Photoshop Effects Magic, Photoshop In Depth, Photoshop
Textures Magic, and Illustrator f/x and Design. She writes the Tips and
Tricks column for Photoshop User magazine and has written for
MacDesign, Mac User, Mac Week, Mac World, and Electronic Publishing.
She has taught for the prestigious Thunder Lizard Photoshop Conference
and the Professional Photographers of America seminars, as well as for
Drexel University, Moore College of Art, and Gloucester County College.
Sherry holds a Master's Degree in Information Systems and has taken
doctoral-level courses in curriculum design. She is also a two-time
nominee for the Photoshop Hall of Fame.
Requirements:
Adobe Photoshop CS4 (Windows) or Adobe Photoshop CS4 (Mac),
Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended, or any version of Adobe Creative Suite
CS4 that includes the Adobe Photoshop CS4 or Adobe Photoshop CS4
Extended software (software must be installed and fully operational
before the course begins); Microsoft ® Windows® XP with Service Pack 2
or Windows Vista™ Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise
(certified for 32-bit editions) on Intel ® Pentium® 4, Intel Centrino®,
Intel Xeon®, or Intel Core™ Duo (or compatible) processor; Mac OS X
v.10.4.8 or higher (on PowerPC® G4 or G5 or multicore Intel processor);
Internet access; e-mail; and the Internet Explorer or Netscape or
Firefox Web browser; A minimum of 512MB RAM (at least 1GB recommended);
1024x768 monitor resolution with at least a 16-bit video card; 64MB
video RAM.
To purchase this course, click the Enroll Now button below:
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