If you want to work with graphics, Photoshop is the program you will most need to learn. Artists, photographers, designers, and hobbyists all rely on Adobe Photoshop for graphic design work. Discover the fastest and most effective ways to use Photoshop from an expert and columnnist for Photoshop User magazine.

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!

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. You’ll also learn how to use the power of Photoshop’s brush engine and how to use Photoshop’s selection tools.

By the time you finish this fun, hands on, project-oriented course, you will be well on your way to expressing yourself with the most exciting graphics program ever developed.

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Syllabus:

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 the lesson is released, but you must complete each lesson within two weeks of its release.

A new section of each course starts on the second or third Wednesday of each month. 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.

Week One

Wednesday - Lesson 01

Introduction to the Photoshop Interface: 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. Your first stop gives you a bit of history and then lets you take your own first steps: creating and saving an image.

Friday - Lesson 02

Painting and Choosing Colors: Photoshop has a reputation for being difficult, but its painting tools are very easy to learn and are fun to use. In fact, many students say that the brushes are Photoshop’s nicest surprise. We'll start with the Brush tool because you need to understand how colors work in Photoshop and you’ll need to use brushes when you retouch photos. I won’t try to make a painter of you, but it’s amazing how many students discover that they can create in pixels in ways that they couldn’t manage with messy paints.

Week Two

Wednesday - Lesson 03

Navigating, Erasing, and Colorizing Images: If you’ve been waiting patiently to start making changes to a photograph, you’ll learn some neat new tricks in this lesson. Sepia is a very popular look for a photo, and in this lesson, you’ll learn how you can add a sepia tone to an image. You’d never think that an Eraser tool could help you to combine images or to bring back images the way they looked when you first opened them, but it’s all part of the Photoshop magic you’ll meet here. You’ll also see how you can use the Brush tool to help give your photo a better exposure.

Friday - Lesson 04

Making and Saving Rectangular and Oval Selections: Photoshop, as wonderful as it is, is still a computer program. It has to be told what to do. In this lesson, you’ll learn the critical skill of making selections. If you want Photoshop to fill an area with color, you need to choose the area—or else Photoshop fills the entire image. You’ll also practice creating vignettes, which are photos with opaque centers that fall off to very soft edges. It’s a great technique to use on a portrait when you don’t like the original background. Because it can take time to make selections, you’ll meet a great technique for saving and reusing the selections you make.

Week Three

Wednesday - Lesson 05

Additional Ways to Make and Use Selections: Have you ever looked at your photos and thought “Gee I wish I had THAT sky behind THIS photo”? In this lesson, as you further your skills at making selections and using some new selection tools, you’ll get the chance to put two images together to change the background.

Friday - Lesson 06

Creating Custom Brushes: This is the lesson that makes students wonder if maybe they dropped their art courses too soon. Photoshop’s brushes are amazing and such fun to create, even if you can’t figure out what you’d paint with them. You can make brushes that change color as you paint and that seem to dance across an image. You can create brushes from any section of a photo and stamp them onto your image. Forget about making art and just remember the sheer fun of playing.

Week Four

Wednesday - Lesson 07

The Possibilities of Gradients: Gradients are fountains of color created by blending at least two hues. The gradients that you can create in Photoshop are endless and exciting. If your photos are anything like mine, you’ll have lots of pictures that could benefit from color or a new treatment for the background. You’ll learn how to make a portrait much more exciting by adding a gradient to it.

Friday - Lesson 08

The History Brush Tool, the History Palette, and Snapshots: What would you give to be able to look over your life and bring all the good times back again? It can’t happen in reality, but in the world of Photoshop, anything’s possible. You can use Photoshop’s History features not only to get rid of the bad things you did to an image, but to recapture and paint with your image as it looked a number of steps back. In the process, you’ll learn a neat way of getting rid of most of the dust and scratches on your photos in just a few steps.

Week Five

Wednesday - Lesson 09

Setting Type and Adding Effects to Text: 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. Try your hand at making type that warps, wiggles, and wraps around a circle. Then see what you can do to text on your own.

Friday - Lesson 10

Setting Image Resolution, Scanning, and Printing: If you’ve ever looked at your printed images and wondered how they got so small (or so large), you’ll solve that mystery here. You’ll figure out how to make them the right size, whether that “right size” is for printing or for the web. You’ll also discover ways to make your images print at their best. You’ll figure out how to scan an image so it’s large enough, but not too large, and how to crop images that have more than you really want to see.

Week Six

Wednesday - Lesson 11

Fixing and Enhancing Images: Did the dog leave tooth marks in Grandma’s picture? Does baby have red eyes? Today, you'll learn to fix all of these photo problems and more. You’ll discover how to create picture-perfect skin tones that any teen would swoon over. If you’ve been waiting to learn the basics of photo retouching, this lesson is your chance.

Friday - Lesson 12

Correct Images for Exposure, Color, Color Cast, and Tonal Value: Sometimes you mean to take an image with a yellow color cast; sometimes, you don’t. If yellow (or purple, or blue) wasn’t quite the color you had in mind for the photo, today you'll learn how to get rid of it. You 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 your photography looks perfect. Of course, if you forgot to take off the lens cap, not even Photoshop can fix that one!

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, fiber artist, writer, and teacher. Her 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 is a two-time nominee to the Photoshop Hall of Fame. 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.

Requirements:

Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Windows XP or 2000 or Adobe Photoshop CS2 Mac and Mac OS X; comfort using a mouse, saving and retrieving files, and downloading images; Internet access, e-mail, the Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Web browser, and the Adobe Flash and PDF plug-ins (two free and simple downloads you obtain at http://www.adobe.com/downloads by clicking Get Adobe Flash Player and Get Adobe Reader). Note: Photoshop software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins.

Student Reviews: