Photoshop & Picasa Group Courses

Photoshop Courses

These one day Photoshop group courses are restricted to three students and will suit anyone from the complete novice to the intermediate Photoshop user. The beginners courses are structured to worked with any version of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements although the screen may appear be slightly different with the various editions.

Do all pictures need editing in Photoshop?

I’m often asked “Do all pictures need editing in Photoshop?”. My answer - "No, but most shots could be enhanced by editing".

When I started my professional photography, career 30 years ago, I was dodging, burning and using different contrast grades of black and white photographic paper to change how the image looked. I could take the same images and process it in the darkroom in different ways to alter the feel of the image. I could print it darker for a moody, somber effect, or add extra contrast for a dramatic feel, or I could keep it light and airy. I really don't see why (within reason) that this is any different today by using Photoshop or some other editing software. Often the image you take doesn't convey the emotion you felt at the time so editing is a way to reconnect to the scene and hopefully a second chance to produce an image which recaptures those feelings.

Click here for larger version of the above picture

Another question I'm asked is " Do I need to spend a lot of money on Photoshop ?". I say it depends on the picture and how you feel about it. Below I've offered three variants to demonstrate my thinking. One original, one a basic contrast edit, in the free Picasa program from Google, and one Photoshop image simply edited using the Dodge and Burn tools just as I would have done in the darkroom 30 years ago. All the images remain true to the original but have subtle differences. glen@digitalphotographycourses.co.uk

Book a DSLR Private Tuition Course £325

Your own laptop with Photoshop installed would be useful be we do have spare laptops you can use. The beginners courses are primarily aimed at the Photoshop basics of:

• Basic image adjustments using Levels
• Basic image adjustments using Curves (not Elements)
• Making selections using the Wand, Lasso & selection tools
• Improving & replacing skies
• An explanation of Image Size, Resolution & Quality
• Preparing Prints for exhibition or display
• Cropping for the web & print

All our Photoshop courses start off with the absolute basics and progress, step by step, through to some of the more technical aspects of the program. We only allow three students on any course so we can provide as much individual attention as possible. If it turns out one students has a greater knowledge than the others we can offer them extra more taxing projects. Any students will also be given password access to our growing library of online Photoshop tutorials.

Photoshop Private Tuition costs £325 - Monday - Friday & group courses cost £175pp for a maximum of 3 students on a weekend.

Picasa Private Tuition & Group Courses

Picasa v Photoshop

Where as the industry standard programme for image editing is Photoshop we at Digital Photography Courses are great fans of the free Picasa programme from Google. This amazing photo editing and storage program will allow you to file, edit, crop, rotate, straighten, email, back-up and share your images with ease. In fact there are some tasks that this free software will perform better than the full version of Photoshop CS5 which costs almost £500. This is such an extensive programme it takes a full day to cover it all and if you find Photoshop too complicated I would certainly look at attending one of our Picasa training courses. We are able to take four students and your own laptop with Picasa installed would be useful.

Course Outline

Picasa Lesson 1 - Downloading Picasa
Picasa Lesson 2 - Installing Picasa
Picasa Lesson 3 - Getting pictures from the camera to Picasa
Picasa Lesson 4 - Viewing images in Picasa
Picasa Lesson 5 - Selecting multiple images in Picasa
Picasa Lesson 6 - Emailing pictures from Picasa using Outlook
Picasa Lesson 7 - Emailing pictures from Picasa using GMail
Picasa Lesson 8 - More about saving pictures
Picasa Lesson 9 - Exporting Pictures to a memory card

And much,much more

Private Tuition costs £325 - Monday - Friday

Buy a Private Tuition Course £325

DSLR Photography Plus Photoshop Tuition > More

The DSLR Photography plus Photoshop Tuition course follows the same basic structure as the normal one day one to one photography course but the practical photography exercise time is reduced to allow for a 2-3 hour Photoshop session. These session are flexible but normally include:

• Basic image adjustments using Levels
• Basic image adjustments using Curves
• Using Adjustment Layers and Masks
• An explanation of Image Size, Resolution & Quality
• Cropping for the web & print

DSLR Photography - Using RAW & HDR > More

The DSLR Photography plus RAW & HDR one to one course concentrates on landscape photography using the RAW file format & HDR techniques. These intensive photography & Photoshop courses are aimed at producing exhibition quality images for print or web use.

What is HDR?

HDR stands for Higher Dynamic Range. The human eye is great at seeing a very wide contrast range but unfortunately digital cameras record a much more limited tonal range. HDR is a method of taking several images and combining them in Photoshop to give a much truer representation of what the eye actually sees. If you find the landscape images your camera takes don't actually look like what you think you saw then this is the best photography course for you. A tripod and a laptop PC with Photoshop installed would be very useful for this course but we do have spares if required.

Please Contact Us If You Have Any Questions

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email - glen@digitalcameracourses.co.uk or call 0116 279 6906

Course Timings

 

9.30 -10am Arrival, coffee & biscuits 10.00am camera settings & theory

12.30 -1.00pm light lunch (included)

1pm-3pm Practical photography

3pm-4pm Review photographs

4pm-5pm Photo-editing Demonstration

5pm Questions & course feedback

 

DSLR Course Requirements

 

Digital SLR Camera

Extra lenses - optional

External flashgun - optional

Fully charged battery and/or a spare

Empty memory card

Any other kit you need explaining

change of shoes if wet.

 

Please ensure you have a fully charged battery as we will be using your camera a lot and batteries do to tend to run out.For batteries and cards at huge discounts visit

www.mymemory.co.uk

 

What are the benefits of Photoshop over Picasa?

 

The main advantage Photoshop has over Picasa is the ability to only change part of a picture or replace one element with another. For instance you can make the sky darker in Photoshop without changing the landscape area whereas in Picasa any changes affect the whole picture.

 

What's the difference between Photoshop and Photoshop Elements?

 

Photoshop Elements is the cut down amateur version of Photoshop. It costs about 20% of the price but probably has 70% of the features. For amateurs Elements will normally do the job.