Adobe PhotoShop CS Course Outline

Overview :
Photoshop CS delivers powerful, industry-standard image-editing tools for professional designers who want to produce sophisticated graphics for print and the Web. This class provides you with the concepts and skills to use Adobe Photoshop effectively. You get hands-on practice working with basic through advanced techniques to get the most out of your experience. You will learn photo retouching; image editing, Animated Images for the Web and web layout. Whether you are a designer, illustrator, photographer, video artist, Webmaster or just a beginner, Photoshop offers you many opportunities to make your images look great.

Prerequisites :
Because of the amount of material we cover in class, we do require students to be comfortable using a mouse, opening and saving files, and the general operations of computers.

Course Outline:

  Introduction

•  Quick Tour of Photoshop CS

•  Photoshop CS New Features

• New Welcome Screen
• Customized Keyboard Shortcut
• Enhanced File Browser
• Nested Layer Sets
• Layer Comps
• Type on a Path
• Export Layers and Frames as Files

•  Getting to Know the Work Area

• Shortcuts
• Starting Adobe Photoshop and opening files
• Using the tools
• Entering values
• Viewing images
• Working with palettes
• Using context menus
• Using online Help
• Using Adobe online services

•  Working with Selections

• Selection tool overview
• Selecting with the rectangular marquee tool
• Selecting with the elliptical marquee tool
• Moving a selection

• Selecting with the magic wand
• Selecting with the lasso tool
• Adding and subtracting selections
• Selecting with the magnetic lasso
• Transforming a selection
• Combining selection tools

Layer Basics and Advanced Layer Techniques

• Organizing artwork on layers
• Creating and viewing layers
• Selecting and removing artwork on a layer
• Rearranging layers and Linking layers
• Changing the opacity and mode of a layer
• Adding a gradient to a layer
• Adding text
• Liquifying a layer
• Applying a layer style
• Creating layer sets
• Flattening and saving files

Photo Retouching

• Strategy for retouching
• Resolution and image size
• Cropping an image
• Adjusting the tonal range
• Removing a color cast

Replacing colors in an image

• Adjusting saturation with the sponge tool
• Adjusting lightness with the dodge tool
• Removing unwanted objects
• Replacing part of an image
• Applying the Unsharp Mask filter
• Saving the image for four-color printing
• Painting with the art history brush

Creating Special Effects

• Saving and loading a selection
• Hand-coloring selections on a layer
• Combining and moving selections
• Colorizing a selection
• Using a grid
• Changing the color balance
• Applying filters
• Improving performance with filters

Basic Pen Tool Techniques

• Drawing paths with the pen tool
• Drawing straight paths
• Drawing curved paths
• Combining straight and curved lines
• Drawing a path around artwork

Masks and Channels

• Working with masks and channels
• Creating a quick mask
• Editing a quick mask
• Saving a selection as a mask
• Editing a mask
• Loading a mask as a selection and applying an adjustment
• Extracting an image
• Applying a filter effect to a masked selection
• Creating a gradient mask
• Applying effects using a gradient mask About Bitmap Images and Vector Graphics

Setting Up Your Monitor for Color Management

• Color management: An overview
• Calibrating and characterizing your monitor using Adobe Gamma
• Saving the monitor profile

Web Features

• Plug-ins Web Tour of Photoshop CS
• Using Photoshop and ImageReady CS together
• Optimizing Images for the Web
• Animation

Adobe Photoshop CS/ImageReady CS for the Web

Optimizing Images for the Web

• Optimizing images using Photoshop or ImageReady
• Getting started
• Optimizing a JPEG image
• Optimizing a GIF image
• Controlling dither
• Specifying background transparency
• Creating an image map
• Batch-processing file optimization
• Review questions
• Review answers

•  Creating Animated Images for the Web

• Creating animations in Adobe ImageReady
• Getting started
• Creating simple motion
• Creating a transition between image states
• Creating a two-step animation
• Rotating and moving an object
• Creating a montage sequence
• Using advanced layer features to create animations

Creating Web Graphics Using Slices and Rollovers Web

• Getting started
• About slices
• Slicing the image in Photoshop
• Optimizing slices in Photoshop
• Slicing the image in ImageReady
• Optimizing slices in ImageReady
• Creating rollovers
• Previewing the completed banner in a browser
• Saving the sliced images in ImageReady

ImageReady CS New Features

• Web Content Pallette
• Export to Macromedia Flash
• Collaborative Web Gallery creation