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Courses >
Digital Photography & Digital Video > Photoshop CS4 for the Digital Photographer
 Adobe's Photoshop CS4 is a powerful software solution providing support and
specialized editing tools for digital photographers and graphic
artists. In this course, we'll focus on how to select and use the
professional techniques most helpful to photographers. Designed for
those with no image-editing experience, this class will take you from
novice to accomplished photo editor.
In Photoshop CS4, Adobe has
combined the power of their award-winning technology with sophisticated
tools that produce dynamic results. This course offers simple,
step-by-step instructions for correcting flaws, enhancing the final
product, adding text, and preparing images for e-mail and the Web.
Along the way, you'll learn how to use the tools that make this
software so popular and unique in the world of digital image editing.
As
the high-end program in Adobe's collection of photo-editing software,
Photoshop CS4 gives users all the tools they need to create outstanding
digital images. Because this course is specifically targeted at
photographers, you'll come away with a collection of useful techniques
and quickly start seeing amazing results in your images!
Recommended Courses:
Students who enrolled in Photoshop CS4 for the Digital Photographer also enjoyed the following courses:
Discover Digital Photography
Secrets of Better Photography
Creating Web Graphics with Photoshop CS3
Photoshop Elements 5.0 for the Digital Photographer
Photoshop CS2 for the Digital Photographer
Photographing People with your Digital Camera
Introduction to Photoshop CS3
Photoshop Elements 6.0 for the Digital Photographer II
Photoshop Elements 6.0 for the Digital Photographer
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 |
Photoshop CS4 is
an excellent package for photographers to enhance and edit digital
images. In our first lesson, you'll see how to download the images
we'll use in class and take a tour of Photoshop CS4. Then you'll get a
taste of what you can do with the program as we start at the beginning,
with cropping and rotating images. If you've never used Photoshop
before, have no fear— this course is designed to make even the
inexperienced user comfortable with image editing and enhancement.
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| Friday - Lesson 02 |
Digital
images come in all sizes! But what does that mean to us? Today we'll
discuss image resolution, pixels, and recommendations for resizing
pictures with excellent results. You'll learn how to optimize your
images for the best print or quick transmission with e-mail. We'll also
discuss the many file formats digital images can take and how to use
them to your best advantage with Photoshop.
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| Week Two |
| Wednesday - Lesson 03 |
One of the most powerful features in Photoshop is layers.
In this lesson, you'll have a chance to create a new file and copy
another image into it, exploring the basics of layers as you go. You'll
also see how to set color options for many of the Photoshop features,
and you'll discover how to adjust color in your images.
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| Friday - Lesson 04 |
Light
is the essence of photography, but it's not always cooperative. Today
we'll discuss ways to enhance and even create better lighting after
you've taken an image. You'll see how to use Brightness and Contrast to
improve your images, and you'll have a chance to work with Levels and
Curves, two of Photoshop's best features for correcting lighting and
color tones.
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| Week Three |
| Wednesday - Lesson 05 |
People use photos
for many creative projects, and text often plays a part in these.
Photoshop gives you plenty of text tools to work with. In this lesson,
you'll explore them and practice adding text to your images, including
text made from the images themselves! You'll also begin your study of
the powerful selection tools, with the Quick Selection tool, the
color-based Magic Wand tool, and the flexible Lasso tool. While we're
exploring these, you'll see the power of feathering selections.
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| Friday - Lesson 06 |
As
we continue our study of selection tools, you'll learn how to create
silhouettes and creative backgrounds to set your selections off. We'll
see how the Marquee tools let you select perfect square and circles for
use in framing and highlighting your images. You'll continue to work
with feathering and see the difference it makes, especially when you
want to create a soft, blended background in your image. You'll also
see how to use the Marquee tool to create borders and frames around
your pictures. To wrap up our study of Selection tools, we'll explore
the many options in the Select menu.
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| Week Four |
| Wednesday - Lesson 07 |
Distortion:
It's not a word you often think of as desirable in photography, but
with the options in Photoshop, you'll find that it can do wonders!
You'll see how to slim a waistline, trim loose edges, and accentuate
the positive with distortion tools. In this lesson, we'll also look at
tools to perfect portraits. Although you can use these tools for
fine-tuning any type of image, many people often use them on the detail
work associated with portraiture. You'll see how to smooth away
wrinkles, remove red eye, and even turn gray hair brown. If only it
were so easy in real life!
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| Friday - Lesson 08 |
It's
time for more advanced work with layers. Today you'll take time to see
how they work from beginning to end. With layers, you'll build a
quickly modifiable business card and a collage. Along the way, you'll
learn how to use Adjustment and Fill layers to your advantage.
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| Week Five |
| Wednesday - Lesson 09 |
In this lesson,
we'll discuss Retouching and Correcting tools, which come in handy when
your photo subject shows up with a bit of red eye or a
less-than-perfect complexion. You'll perfect your skills with the Red
Eye tool, the Clone Stamp tool, the Patch tool, and the powerful
Healing Brushes. You'll also have a chance to experiment with
Photoshop's improved Raw Editor, and you'll see why you may want to
shoot in raw format.
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| Friday - Lesson 10 |
Panoramics
are a beautiful way to show off wide scenic shots. Some lenses
naturally give you panoramic images, but did you know that you can also
create one of these shots using several separate photos? Today you'll
see how Photoshop helps you blend these to provide seamless panoramic
imagery. You'll learn how to resize images and add colored borders to
make your images just the size you want, and you'll have a chance to
try out CS4's new Content Aware Scaling, which lets you resize a photo
without having to crop it. With all these options under your belt,
you'll see how to create customized photo cards with your own captions.
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| Week Six |
| Wednesday - Lesson 11 |
As photographers,
we try to take pictures in sharp focus and with color and lighting the
way we see them—but sometimes we need a little help. Luckily, Photoshop
is there with lots of options. In this lesson, you'll explore artistic
filters, techniques for sharpening and blurring images, and ways to
capture screen shots for documenting your work.
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| Friday - Lesson 12 |
As
you know by now, Photoshop gives you lots of options for editing
images. In our last lesson, we'll turn to the task of restoring old and
damaged photographs. You'll see how to reverse the effects of time as
well as how to add hints of color to black-and-white images. Think
those old photographs will never look any better? You'll be amazed at
what you can do with all the skills you've picked up during this course!
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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 Beverly Schulz.
 Beverly
Schulz is a freelance photographer and a graduate of the New York
Institute of Photography's Professional Photographer's program. She
teaches a number of classes in digital photography and has more than 25
years of classroom instruction experience. Her writing and photography
have been published in a number of magazines. She has traveled
extensively and participated in onsite photography workshops as well as
independent photo quests. In addition to teaching and photographic
work, she provides consulting services for digital photographers and
clients.
Requirements:
In addition to Internet access for classroom participation,
students will need Adobe's Photoshop CS4 to take full advantage of the
course. Students should feel comfortable acquiring digital images,
either with a digital camera, using images scanned onto CDs, or
scanning film prints. Basic computer skills, such as using a mouse,
creating and accessing folders, downloading and saving files will be
briefly reviewed in this course, but should be familiar to the student.
Adobe
Photoshop CS4 (Windows Vista/XP) or Adobe Photoshop Extended
CS4(Windows Vista/XP) or Adobe Photoshop CS4 (Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger /
10.5 Leopard)or Adobe Photoshop Extended CS4 (Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger /
10.5 Leopard) are all acceptable (Software must be installed and fully
operational before the course begins); Microsoft Windows XP with
Service Pack 2 (Service Pack 3 recommended) or Windows Vista Home
Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise with Service Pack 1
(certified for 32-bit Windows XP and 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista)
with a minimum of 512MB of RAM. Monitor 1024x768 display (1280x800
recommended); Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger / 10.5 Leopard 2GB of available
hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during
installation (cannot install on a volume that uses a case-sensitive
file system or on flash-based storage devices). Monitor with 1,024x768
display (1,280x800 recommended); Internet access; e-mail; and the
Internet Explorer or Netscape or Firefox Web browser.
Note: This
course is written for Windows, but Macintosh users will find the
software is quite similar and are welcome in this course. Mac users
will need to be comfortable with the normal Windows/Mac conversion for
keyboard differences. Photoshop Extended is NOT necessary for this
course, but can be used. All coursework and examples are based on
Windows Vista using standard Photoshop CS4 software.
To purchase this course, click the Enroll Now button below:
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