Adobe Photoshop CS4: Introduction

Course Description:

Adobe Photoshop is the worldwide standard for anyone working with digital images. This extremely popular course has proved to be the most efficient and effective way of getting started in Photoshop CS4.

The course covers all major Photoshop features including compositing images, graphics and text, making colour corrections to an image, understanding resolution, creating a montage, using Photoshop filters, working with layers and channels and preparing images for use in print and the web.

This is an Adobe authorised training course which will allow you to radically increase your creative options.

This course includes the following modules:

Photoshop essentials

• The Photoshop interface
• Working with tabbed windows
• The Arrange menu
• Customising panel layout
• Using the Navigator panel
• The Zoom and Hand tools
• The Rotate View tool
• Using the History Panel and multiple undo
• The History Brush and Snapshots
• Using guides, grids and rules

The characteristics of a Photoshop file

• Pixels and paint programs
• Image resolution, dimensions and file size
• Understanding colour channels and modes
• Understanding file formats

Setting basic image characteristics

• Working with Adobe Bridge
• Creating new documents
• Cropping and rotating artwork
• Changing image resolution and artwork size
• Changing the Canvas Size
• Making colour mode conversions
• Saving and exporting files for web and print

Correcting an image

• Understanding image Histograms
• Using the Info panel
• Levels command
• Checking for colour casts
• Adjusting colour balance
• Editing colour Hue and Saturation
• Replacing object colour
• The Vibrance command

Defining selections

• Lasso, magic wand and marquee tools
• Quick Selection tool
• Selecting by colour range
• Feathering selections
• Modifying and transforming selection shape
• Saving and loading selections

Retouching techniques

• Dodge and burn tools
• Sharpen and Blur filters
• Focus tools
• The Clone and Heal tools in CS4
• Repairing imperfections and removing details

Working with paint and colour

• Using the Eyedropper tool
• Mixing paint and fill colours
• Print and web safe colours
• The Pencil and Paintbrush tools
• Adding solid colour fills
• Adding gradient fills

Working with layers

• Adding transparency to objects
• Buidiing a multi-layered document
• Moving, scaling and rotating layers
• Linking layers
• Locking and protecting layers
• Creating Layer groups
• Merging and flattening layers
• Exporting layered documents

Creative techniques using Layers

• Creating Layers for Paint and Fill effects
• Layer opacity and blends
• Adding layer effects
• Adding drop shadows
• Glow and emboss treatments
• Introducing layer masks

Shape and text layers

• Introducing vector shape layers
• Polygons, lines and custom shapes
• Working with the Text tool
• Adjusting character attributes
• Text anti-aliasing

Special effects with filters

• Using Photoshop filters
• Working with the Filter Gallery
• Using Smart Filter Layers
• Fading the effects of filters
• Using the Liquify command

Printing and optimising documents

• Printing from Photoshop
• The Save for Web command
• Understanding image compression and optimization settings