Photoshop 6 Tips & Tricks

Course length: 1 day

Course description

Overview: Students will expand on the skills covered in the Photoshop Basic Skills 1 and Photoshop Basic Skills 2 courses by working on a variety of image types. While students will learn to work with additional specific Photoshop commands and tools, they'll also study concepts that tie together multiple techniques they already know to create effects and make their work more efficient.

Prerequisites: To ensure your success, you must have first completed the Software Training course Photoshop 6: Level 1 and Photoshop 6: Level 2, and have a strong working knowledge of the Windows environment. For example, you should know how to launch an application, create and save files, and copy files from CDs and other media. The Software Training courses Windows 98: Introduction, Windows ME: Introduction and Windows XP: Introduction teach these skills.

Delivery method: Instructor-led, group-paced, classroom-delivery learning model with structured hands-on activities.

Benefits: Students will first work to clean up line art, then use shortcuts and styling techniques for layers. Students will work with photographic images, repairing an old damaged picture, softening the focus on one to add atmosphere, and will colorize grayscale images with a variety of techniques. Students will learn to create realistic three dimensional effects by distorting layers and with lighting effects. Lastly, students will save multi-step processes to actions that they can apply later to any image.

Target student: Students enrolling in this course should understand the tools, techniques, and concepts covered in the Photoshop 6 Basic Skills 1 and Photoshop 6 Basic Skills 2 courses, and should be interested in learning techniques that will increase efficiency as well as tap into Photoshop’s potential for creating interesting effects.

What's next: Photoshop 6 Basic Skills 1 is the first course in this series, and is followed by Photoshop 6 Basic Skills 2. This course, Photoshop 6 Tips & Tricks, can be taken immediately after the Basics 1 and 2 courses. Students who want to learn techniques for creating and optimizing graphics for the Web should take the Software Training course, Photoshop 6 Web Production. Students who want to learn to use Photoshop’s color correction features and to prepare images for print should take Photoshop 6 Color Correction & Printing.

Performance-based objectives

Lesson objectives help students become comfortable with the course, and also provide a means to evaluate learning. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Clean up jagged line art and accurately replace colors in line art with soft edges.
• Apply time-saving shortcuts for selecting, stacking, and blending layers.
• Precisely control layer styles with contours and with combinations of layer effects, as well as by splitting layer effects onto multiple layers.
• Repair and retouch old damaged photos efficiently and accurately.
• Create atmosphere in an image by applying a soft focus effect and adding emphasis to the foreground.
• Colorize grayscale images with a variety of techniques to create hand-tinted and sepiatone effects.
• Wrap a two-dimensional object around a three-dimensional one realistically.
• Use lighting effects and create cast shadows to further simulate three dimensions.
• Transform a photographic image into a painted one with brushes, filters, and blending modes.
• Combine multiple steps into one by saving them as Actions.

Course content

Lesson 1: Working with Line Art

Cleaning Up Low Resolution Art

Changing Line Art Color

Lesson 2: Layer Shortcuts & Techniques

Layer Shortcuts

Layer Styling Techniques

Lesson 3: Photographic Techniques

Cropping Tricks

Photo Restoration

Making Focus Adjustments to Images

Colorizing Grayscale Photos

Lesson 4: Creating Realism

Simulating Three Dimensions

Lighting Effects

Simulating Painted Effects

Lesson 5: Actions

Creating Actions

Working with Actions