Course Description

This course was written by Ron Lacey and will be taught by Sonja Shea, Peter Mayer, & Vikki Long. Not so long ago photographers had two choices in the process of getting pictures out of their cameras. They could take their exposed film down to the local photo lab and anywhere from one hour to several days later receive a wad of 3X5 prints. All processing decisions were out of their hands. Or they could spend thousands of dollars to set up their own darkroom and invest many hours and more dollars learning the skills involved in making quality prints. Those were the bad old days. Now, with the advent of high quality affordable digital cameras and inkjet printers those days are behind us. On the most basic level you can simply download images from your camera to your computer and print them out on your inkjet printer. Some printers will even let you print photos without the use of a computer. No more trips to the mall to process your pictures. Sharing photos with friends and family is also a snap with email or photo websites. But your computer is much more than a convenient one hour photo center. With the right software you can do things with your images that even a skilled photo finisher with a well equipped darkroom would find difficult, time consuming, and often impossible. Of course that software is Adobe Photoshop, the industry standard in image editing. In this class you'll learn how to navigate your way through Photoshop Bridge, discover the power of the camera RAW file format with Adobe Camera Raw and learn how to produce the best possible final results from you camera files. We'll be covering basic and advanced photo editing techniques as well as some of the exciting special effects you can accomplish in Photoshop. This is a 5 week, self-paced, online course. If you need additional help understanding the material presented, you can communicate with the instructor and fellow classmates. The instructor will monitor and track your progress throughout the class. LVS Online offers many wonderful learning tools to help you get the most out of your online course, including an online portfolio service that manages all your course registrations, certificate of completion option, a class discussion board to interact with your instructor and fellow classmates, free hosting account, and a student upload area. LVS is a Corel Training Partner. LVS students may purchase Corel products at a significant savings. Follow this link for details. LVS students are eligible to receive software and hardware at a discount. Follow this link for details. Students are also eligible take advantage of special offers made available specifically for LVS by famous software developers such as Andromeda, AV Bros, Extensis, Harry Heim, namesuppressed, Nik Multimedia, and Ulead. Details are provided in the classinfo link found in the confirmation of registration. Show off your LVS Online spirit with an item from the LVS Store If you would like to receive more information regarding this course, click on the "Contact Us" link in the Information section and we'll try to answer any of your questions within the day.

Course Requirements

You'll need a copy of Photoshop CS2 or CS3 (Photoshop CS is also acceptable but because of feature enhancements in later versions some portions of the class won't apply) and of course a digital camera. Homework must be reviewed by the instructor in order to earn a certificate. Students have the option of using the Student Upload Area or free web hosting made available for LVS students. Details are provided in the classroom. If you prefer to use your own web space, you must know how to upload your files to a server. Free tutorials are available: Basic HTML page WS_FTP SmartFTP Students should have working knowledge of their operating system and must understand directories and paths: Free Windows Class Here Directory Structure Tutorial Here Zip files may be necessary to complete the exercises provided each week. WinZip, PKZip, Windows Compression or similar program is required to unzip these files. Winzip Tutorial Here Windows Compression All lessons are available in PDF format. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view/print the lessons. Plan to devote 3 - 4 hours per week on the lesson and assignment.

Course Prerequisites

This class assumes prior Photoshop knowledge. If you don't have this knowledge, enroll in the Photoshop Intro class first.

Course Excerpt

LESSON 1 Navigating the Browser With Photoshop CS2 Adobe introduced an new standalone application called Bridge. This replaced the built in file browser and added powerful new features. You can open Bridge as a standalone application under Start>Programs>Adobe Bridge or from within Photoshop under File>Browse. Figure 1.01 above shows the CS2 Bridge in Horizontal Filmstrip view mode, the four icons in the lower left hand corner control the view modes which from left to right are Thumbnail view, Filmstrip view, Details view and Versions and Alternatives View. You can also activate the various Bridge palettes from the View Menus. Beside the View selection Icons is the handy thumbnail size slider. As well you can adjust the size of the panes by dragging the borders between them. On the right hand side we have several handy panes topmost the Folders and Favourites. The Folder tab gives us a classic directory tree view of our computer and it's drives, this works pretty much like Windows Explorer and in the File and Edit menus you have most of the standard file management tools. The Favourites tab is a place you can store either individual photos or entire folders. You populate it by selecting the photo or folder in question and right click then choose Add to Favourites. At the bottom of the right hand pane we have the Metadata and Keywords tabs. Metadata includes file properties, IPTC data and EXIF data, more on this later. The keywords feature allows you to assign words to photos which can be used as search criteria. Bridge comes preloaded with a number common keywords. These words are organized in sets, to expand a set click on the triangle to the left of the check box. You can assign these to individual photos by selecting a photo and checking the box for the keyword in question. You can also assign keywords to groups of photos by making a multiple selection (click photos while holding down the ctrl or shift keys) and checking the keyword in question, if you check a set keyword all the words in the set will be assigned. You can add your own keywords and keyword sets. To add a keyword set right click and then click on New Keyword Set, to add a keyword to a set highlight the set you want the word added to, right click and choose New Keyword from the drop down menu. To search for photos containing keywords highlight a keyword, right click and choose Find. The search will be within the selected folder, if you want to search an entire drive select the drive from the folders view and check the All Subfolders box in the Find dialog palette. Continued... Please note: Lessons provide step-by-step instructions with detailed screen captures.

Course Goals

Upon completion of this class you will be able to do things with your images that even a skilled photo finisher with a well equipped darkroom would find difficult, time consuming, and often impossible.

Course Reviews

New Class January 2008