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
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 we finish this first lesson. You'll also find out how to download the images we'll use in class.
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 also Photoshop's most basic tools, so you'll want to know how to use them even if you never really need to paint anything. For example, you'll use brushes to heal and fix images later in the course. So we'll spend today's lesson practicing with the basic Brush tool. Although you won't need any art talent to use Photoshop's brushes, many students discover latent art ability that completely surprises them!
Week Two
Wednesday - Lesson 03
Today, you'll learn how to scroll around your image so you can more easily see the pixels as you edit. You'll learn how to erase, and you'll meet one of Photoshop's neatest tricks: the Erase to History command. This command helps you combine images or to bring images back to the way they looked when you first opened them. The other piece of magic you'll discover is how to colorize images or create the always-popular sepia tones.
Friday - Lesson 04
In this lesson, you'll learn the critical skill of making selections. Selecting simply means isolating a specific part of an image so you can make changes to just that part. 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 a vignette, which is a photo 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. And if you don't like the selection you just made, you can use the fabulous new Photoshop CS3 Refine Edges command. We'll go over that today, too.
Week Three
Wednesday - Lesson 05
Photoshop has some great "smart" selection tools, but until CS3, all of the selection tools have had some limitations. You can see the flower—why can't Photoshop? Photoshop CS3 has fixed that with the new Quick Selection tool, and you'll get a chance to try it out in this lesson as you practice putting two images together.
Friday - Lesson 06
A lot of students are surprised when they see how much control they can have over how a Photoshop brush performs. We'll go over several different options in today's lesson. You'll learn how to make a brush change colors as you paint, and how to make a brush seem to dance across an image. You'll even create brush strokes that look like stitches on a quilt, following the direction of your cursor. You'll also learn how to use a brush to create a stamp from any section of an image, and then use that stamp anywhere else in your image.
Week Four
Wednesday - Lesson 07
Gradients are fountains of color that blend all the hues in between a starting color 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 when you add gradients to them.
Friday - Lesson 08
If you enjoyed the Erase to History command, get ready for this super-charged version—the History Brush tool. This incredible tool gives you an unlimited do-over on your photo for as long as you have the image open on your screen. You can add filters and generally experiment with any feature that Photoshop possesses, but still get back to your original image or to a version of the image in the recent past. In this lesson, you'll learn to use the History Brush to make stunning black and white with color images, to color correct an image, and then to make a totally wild impressionistic art image from a photo.
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
In today's lesson, you'll learn how to "right size" your images, whether that right size is for printing or for the Web. You'll also unlock the mysteries of printing so that your prints have the best chance to profit from your new Photoshop skills. You'll find out how to scan an image so it's large enough, but not too large, and how to crop an image that shows more than you really want to see.
Week Six
Wednesday - Lesson 11
Today you'll learn the three R's of photo manipulation: Retouching, restoring, and rearranging. You'll be amazed at what you can do—and you'll no longer trust the phrase "pictures don't lie." You'll also discover another incredible new feature in Photoshop CS3—the Clone Stamp palette. This new addition lets you copy imagery from anywhere in an open image and brush it into your picture while changing size and orientation.
Friday - Lesson 12
Sometimes you mean to take an image with a yellow colorcast—sometimes, you don't. If you didn't mean it, then you'll enjoy learning about CS3's new ability to edit JPG files inside Camera Raw to help your images look their best. 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 forget to take off the lens cap, even Photoshop can't help you!