How do you know what you need? Perhaps you don't at this stage, but we do and we ask you to follow our guidance and accept our experience here.

Transcription

1 Introduction - 5 mins A short introduction about the disk and contents Good Housekeeping on our Computer - 10 mins Here we deal with keeping order on our PC as we begin to shoot thousands of digital images. We have a simple, but logical suggestion that has served us well for at least 15 years. Without some good housekeeping and order on your PC, you will soon become hopelessly lost in a sea of pictures, never being able to find what you want. Setting Up Photoshop CS-6 Preferences - 12 mins Here we take you through the Photoshop preferences. Many of them will be set for us, but knowing about them may be important for later. Seeing some of them helps us to relate to them later when we are going about our creative work. Setting up our Screen and Palettes - 6 mins When we open Photoshop for the first time the screen is packed full of options. Many of those we will never use, some we certainly don't need now, so why leave them scattered all over the screen, getting in the way and adding to an already steep learning curve. Here is one of the first steps to making our life a little easier. How do you know what you need? Perhaps you don't at this stage, but we do and we ask you to follow our guidance and accept our experience here. Setting up Bridge Preferences and Screen 15 mins For the same reasons we gave above, here we take some time to look at the preferences, there are not many we need to touch, but we can set up the screen to be more useful to us. Save Formats 7 mins Photoshop offers us so many of these and we can get all sorts of advice that just confuses the issues. Here we offer our guidance and experience. We do this with on screen images to explaine what we want and why. Reducing Image Size 19 mins When we change the size of an image we have a lot of options and there is the potential to get things wrong. Here we will take you through reducing the size of your images for a variety of reasons. Adding an

2 image to an is one, posting images on the Internet is another or even creating an image for a slide show. Here, for all the right reasons we are going to throw away pixels, so we need to understand what we are doing and why? Cropping for Composition 7 mins + 21 mins One of the more vital parts of creating great images and how we can impact those images in our image editor. Here we have our video in two parts: First, why composition is so important and second, how the crop tools work in Photoshop. Remember our demonstrations are done using practical and real life projects. We don't just demo the tool and leave it at that. The Levels 18 mins Here we explain a little about what levels are, why they are so important and more importantly how we can make adjustments to those levels. In some cases the effect of those changes have to be seen to be believed. So it is vital we understand this area of Photoshop. The Clone Tool 26 mins It's difficult to demonstrate one tool in an isolated way with Photoshop. It's a bit like a carpenter making a joint, he not only needs the chisel, but also the mallet and perhaps a straight edge too. It's much the same with Photoshop.

3 In our demonstration we remove all the distractions in the image, which are loads of plastic bottles the fisherman use to tie up their boats. Cheap they may be, but they destroy this Maltese Harbour scene. This is a great image to demonstrate the close tools because we need to use a number of techniques to make our work perfect. It may not be so easy to see how damaging all those distractions are in a small thumbnail. The Healing Brushes 18 mins It's arguable that these two tools should have featured before the clone tool above. The reason is that these tools are taking over from the clone tool a little. They make some of the clone tool work we do even easier, but we still need all of these tools, including the clone tool. It's always difficult to show detailed work in small thumbnails, but in this image we can use the healing brushes to remove some quite large objects from the scene. However, one of the other uses, which we demonstrate fully is how effective these tools are in dealing with those annoying dust marks in the skies of our images. We demonstrate it all here. Fixing a Sloping Horizons 11 mins A picture with a sloping horizon is unforgivable because it is not difficult to deal with in Photoshop. Often it's caused when we take our eye off the ball for a moment. We get too wrapped up in the subject we are shooting, but sometimes, as in this example, it was caused in our attempt to be more creative. The important thing is that we fix the problem before we show the image to anyone.

4 Fixing a Curved Horizons 8 mins This is a bit more tricky, but Photoshop has the tools to do it and we demonstrate it here. Caused by wide angle lenses it is just as damaging as a sloping horizon and in fact some authors manage to get both together, but they are able to be fixed with Photoshop CS-6 as we demonstrate here. We can get two types of curve, one like our example on the left below which is like a turned down mouth and one where the curve is upwards like a smile. They are caused when we use wide angle lenses and either tip them up to wards the sky when we frame up on a shot, or tilt them down to take in ground detail. Fixing Converging Verticals - 4 mins You can see that this is not a lengthy process by the length of this video, but we also use our guides here to make sure we get the building fully upright. Chromatic Aberration 7 mins It's arguable whether this is the right subject for a starter disk, but when we get this problem show up in our image, it can be very damaging, especially in prints. Below we have enlarged a portion of the image to show the Chromatic Aberration before and after. If we start making changes to the one on the left, it just gets worse, but we are safe with the one on the right, fixed in seconds with CS-6

5 Image Toning 8 mins Not a difficult job to do at all, but when applied to the right image, it looks great. Traditionally we think of a sepia tone and we demonstrate that here first, but there are also others that work well too and we show one of those below and on the video. Adjustment Layers 19 mins Adjustment layers are a way we can work in Photoshop with Jpeg images and in a non destructive way. What we mean is that any manipulation has some effect on a picture, but working in the way we demonstrate will sidestep those negative issues. The most common reason for us to need these options are to balance up the exposure in our images. It's rare for us to get a perfect exposure and much of the time our work consists of making adjustment in one area, while trying not to impact the other area too badly. We also take Adjustments layers a stage further and demonstrate how we can use them creatively with effects like colour popping, where just one part of our image contains vivid colour.

6 Pulling all the Techniques Together 30 mins With most images we work on, we make a number of small changes to the image. When we adjusted the levels with this image, we fixed one problem, but at the expense of another. Here we are going to have the best of all worlds, but we demonstrate another skill that we all have to learn. What is it that makes one picture ordinary and the same picture suddenly stand out with that Wow value. This demonstration offers that guidance. Sharpening Images 19 mins It's not so easy to show sharpening with tiny thumbnails, but in this section we show you a few tips and tricks on sharpening images. It's an area that many photographers get wrong. Also there are times when it is just not right to sharpen the whole of the image, so we demonstrate that too. Creating a Monochrome Image 13 mins Creating a sparkling monochrome image is not always as easy as you may think. It's certainly not as simple as just removing colour, far from it. What make a great monochrome image is often dependant just as much as the image we start with as the techniques we may use. We shot a number of images like the one on the left at the same time. It's dull, lacking in contrast and appeal, but with a few simple techniques we can create that sparkling Black and White.

7 Selection Facts 12 mins We have used selection tools in these videos, but perhaps we have now reached a point where we can expand on them a little. A Selection Patch 8 mins The technique we demonstrate here is an extremely useful one. Try to see past the actual picture we are using for this demo because it is the technique that is the vital part. We can use these same techniques in a wide variety of images of all subjects, which we have been doing for many years. To fix the image below left is not 20 minutes of critical work, it will take you less than one minute, start to finish. Text and Text Effects 13 mins There are so many options with text that we could fill an entire DVD with demo's and still only scratch the surface. So here we get you started with the text tools and introduce you to some of the creative options too. You can see that we have used colour from the image in our example to make sure the text looks balanced with the image.

8 Creating a Simple Composite Image 19 mins Looking at our images below it doesn't look that difficult to cut out a bird from one picture and drop it into another, but in fact there are quite a few tips and tricks we need to know, to ensure that this action is both seamless and believable. If it's not, you have failed miserably. Here we demonstrate techniques that are relevant to lots of images, not just the work we do here. It's the technique you need to concentrate on rather than our actual example. Soft Focus 8 mins Soft focus is a layers technique and it is completely variable, we demonstrate how. Adding Filter Effects 13 mins How hard can it be to add a Photoshop filter effect. It's not hard at all, if you want your image to look like millions of others. If you want to create something a little more unique to you, then we need a few tips and tricks and we demonstrate some of those here.

9 Shadows and Highlights 5 mins A simple demonstration introducing you to a tool that can be very good at dealing with excessive contrast in high resolution images. It's very quick and easy, takes seconds to apply. Navigating around our images 28 mins Most of the work we do in Photoshop requires us to enlarge the image, so being able to find our way around while doing this work, is almost as important as the work itself. If we can work faster, that tends to influence us to use techniques more. The more we use them, the faster we get, so you can see the advantage of a few minutes spent here. Wacom Graphics Tablets 10 mins Just a short intro to a Graphics Tablet that we have been using for 15+ years. It's so much better than a mouse for image editing. Example: Try signing your name with a pen, then sign it again using your mouse. The mouse is like trying to write with a brick. If you can use a pencil, you can use a graphics tablet, take a look and see what you think. 5 Over 6 Hours of Videos included here in total