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
Today 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. Even if you've never touched Photoshop before, you'll be able to open, edit, and save files before this lesson ends. You'll also learn how to download the images for the lessons.
Friday - Lesson 02
Photoshop's painting tools are a lot of fun to use. In fact, many students say that the brushes are Photoshop's nicest surprise. The brushes are Photoshop's most basic tool, even if you never want to paint anything. You'll use brushes to heal and fix images later in the course, so, in this lesson, we'll start with just the basic Brush tool and the various ways you can choose colors. Although no art talent is needed to use Photoshop's smart brushes, many students discover latent art ability that completely surprises them.
Week Two
Wednesday - Lesson 03
In this lesson, you'll learn how to scroll around your image so you can more easily see the pixels as you edit an image. You'll find out how to erase, blur, smudge, and finger paint on your images. You'll also discover how to recover from mistakes by using the History Brush tool.
Friday - Lesson 04
Making a black and white image from a color one is a much sought-after skill. Today you'll find out how it's done. You'll even learn how to add back a little of the color to create a nice effect. Creating sepia-tone images is another popular topic, and you'll be amazed at how easy it is in Photoshop. In addition, we'll cover some of the tricks you can do with the History Brush tool and history snapshots.
Week Three
Wednesday - Lesson 05
Photoshop needs to be told if you want to make a major change to a specific part of an image. In this lesson, you'll learn the critical skill of making selections. You'll see how easy it is to isolate rectangular or circular portions of your image so you can add a filter or change the colors of that area. You'll also practice creating vignettes, which are photos with an opaque center that falls off to a very soft edge. It's a great technique to use on a portrait when you don't like the original background. If you don't like the selection you just made, you'll get help from the fabulous new Photoshop CS4 Refine Edges command.
Friday - Lesson 06
Photoshop has some great selection tools, but until now, all of them have had trouble selecting exactly what you had in mind. You can see the flower, so why can't Photoshop? Today you'll learn how to use the Lasso, Magic Wand, and Quick Selection tools as you practice making composites by putting two images together.
Week Four
Wednesday - Lesson 07
This is the lesson that makes students ask for more. It comes as a surprise to many that you can have so much control over the performance of a brush. You can make brushes that change color as you paint and that seem to dance across an image. You can even create brushes that look like stitches on a quilt and that follow the direction of your cursor. Learn to create brushes from any section of a photo and use them as a stamp anywhere else in your image.
Friday - Lesson 08
Gradients are fountains of color that encompass all the colors in a blend of a starting and an ending color. One of the current trends in photography is to colorize areas of a photo with a gradient. You can spend hundreds of dollars purchasing gradient-colored stock photos—or just use what you learn in this lesson to create them yourself. Even portraits can be much more exciting with a gradient added to them.
Week Five
Wednesday - Lesson 09
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. You'll try your hand at making type that warps, wiggles, and wraps around a circle. Then you'll see what you can do to text on your own.
Friday - Lesson 10
Today you'll learn how to size your images for printing or for the Web. You'll find out how to scan an image so it's large enough for your needs, but not too large, and how to crop images that have more than you really want to see.
Week Six
Wednesday - Lesson 11
In this lesson, we'll focus on the three R's of photo manipulation: Retouching, Restoring, and Rearranging. You'll be amazed by what you can do—and you'll understand why the phrase "pictures can't lie" is no longer true! You'll also discover how to use the amazing Clone Stamp panel and the new "see-through" feature on the Cone Stamp tool.
Friday - Lesson 12
Sometimes you mean to photograph an image so it shows a yellow color cast; sometimes you don't. In this final lesson, you'll see how to get rid of an unintended color cast. Photoshop 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 it looks perfect.