Philippine Center for Creative Imaging

This course covers advanced tools and techniques for photography and for print production.

This intensive, hands-on workshop unleashes the wealth of tools of Photoshop, many of them either hidden to the average user, not maximized, or worse, used incorrectly. Once mastered, these professional-level shortcuts, tricks, and expert techniques can help you be more productive and work faster without sacrificing quality.

The GRAPHIC ARTIST will benefit because 70 to 80 percent of his work involves editing photographs rather than vector graphics purely. His work is often destined for different output devices, which require different editing treatments.

The PHOTOGRAPHER, whether professional or enthusiast, will see how to extract from digital capture the best color, sharpness, contrast, and impact, like cutting a diamond from a rough stone.

Expected Outcome

At the end of the course, participants are expected to:

• Be able to set up and customize Photoshop
• Use advanced tools and adjust their settings
• Be familiar with and use advanced panels (Property, Adjustment, etc.)
• Apply tonal adjustment-layers
• Apply color corrections, manipulations and enhancements adjustment-layers
• Utilize advanced, non-destructive retouching techniques
• Become familiar with advanced Photoshop functions applicable for image projects, both online and print

Who should attend

The workshop is for graphic artists familiar with the fundamentals of Photoshop, who depend on the application not just to edit a single photo but to hammer out seamless composites, often accomplishing correct and polished photo illustrations on short notice.

It will also benefit professional and serious amateur photographers who want to take their photography to the next level, like a compleat film photographer skilled in darkroom techniques.

Course Outline

Day 1

• Customizing Photoshop
  • Creating your own keyboard shortcut set
  • Creating your own menu set
  • Creating your own workspace
  • Creating a document preset
  • Creating a tool preset
• Tonal Adjustments
  • The role of Histogram
  • Adjustment commands
  • Levels and Curves
  • Shadows/Highlights
  • Using adjustment layers vs. adjustment commands
  • Using blending modes
  • Local or partial tonal adjustments
  • Working in 16-bit images
• Color Correction
  • Setting up the Sample Rate of the Eyedropper
  • Info panel and Color Sampler
  • Color Correction using different techniques

Day 2

• Color Manipulation
  • Color Enhancement Techniques
  • Matching Color Techniques
• Advanced Selections
  • Background Eraser
  • Blending Sliders
  • Luminance and Channel Masking
  • Select and Mask (former Refine Edge)
  • Layer Masking

Day 3

• Advanced Retouching
  • Cleaning and Retouching
  • Lighten blending mode and Actions panel
  • Dust and Scratches filter
  • Vanishing Point filter
  • Content-Aware Fill
  • Content-Aware Scale
  • Content-Aware Move tool
  • Content-Aware Patch tool
  • Lens Correction filter
• Professional Sharpening
  • Review of Sharpening
  • Unsharp Mask filter
  • Edge Sharpening
  • High Pass filter
  • Emboss filter
  • Noise reduction

Prerequisite

To benefit from this course, participants should have completed our Adobe Photoshop: Beginner to Intermediate training course, or have equivalent experience. If you're not sure whether you’re experienced enough to skip the basic course, a self-evaluation form can be sent to you upon request.