NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies
Photoshop Fundamentals, X36.9003005
Instructor: Adam Meisel   Phone: 856.503.9302   Email: adam.meisel@gmail.com
Thursdays, 6:00-9:30, November 20, 2008 through December 18, 2008 (No class on Turkey Day)
Room Change: 48 Cooper Square, Room 209
Course Description Adobe Photoshop, the leading design and production software for raster images, is used to develop print and screen graphics. In this course we’ll cover basic tools, how to set up the program for your personal workflow, creating and transforming objects from scratch, manipulating photography, and industry standards and best practices.
Grading and Attendance Since this class meets over only four sessions, attendance is mandatory. Please tell me or email me in advance if you will be late or unable to make a session. Your grade will be determined by attendance, in-class participation, and your final project.
Section One: Tools, Palettes, and Menus
File Info
  1. •File Types
  2. •Color Spaces
  3. •Resolution
  4. •Raster vs. Vector
Tools
  1. •Cursor
  2. •Marquee, Lasso, and Magic Wand
  3. •Brush, Pencil, Eraser, and Color Picker
  4. •Paint Bucket and Gradient
  5. •Type
  6. •Foreground and Background Colors
  7. •Zoom!
  8. •Guides
Workspace and Palettes
  1. •Turning Palettes on/off, moving around
  2. •History Palette
  3. •Info Palette
  4. •Brushes Palette
  5. •Actions Palette
  6. •Character and Paragraph Palettes
  7. •Creating and saving a workspace
  8. •Layers Palette
Working with Layers
  1. •Creating new layers
  2. •Moving layers
  3. •Naming
  4. •Duplicating
  5. •Grouping
  6. •Deleting
  7. •Reordering
  8. •Opacity
  9. •Selecting multiple layers
Selecting
  1. •Using the Marquee tool
  2. •Adding and Subtracting from a selection
  3. •Inverting
  4. •Select All/Deselect
  5. •Using the Select Menu
  6. •Contract and Expand
  7. •Color Range
  8. •Feather
  9. •Making a layer selection
Project: Practice using the tools to cut images and create objects from scratch.
Section Two: Manipulating Objects and Typography
Transform!
  1. •Free Transform
  2. •Rotate
  3. •Resize
  4. •Stretch
  5. •Trick to find the center
Aligning Objects
Typography
  1. •The Type Tool Options vs. the Character and Paragraph Palettes
  2. •Point v. Paragraph Text
  3. •Leading, Tracking, Kerning
  4. •Faux Styles
  5. •Anti-Aliasing options
  6. •Why you can’t directly edit Type
  7. •Type effects
  8. •Best Practices
Project: Recreate a composition.
Section Three: Image Manipulation
  1. •Resizing
  2. •Adding Canvas
  3. •Cropping
  4. •Levels
  5. •Hue / Saturation
  6. •Contract
  7. •Selecting revisited - Refine Edges
  8. •Masking
  9. •Save For Web
Project: Edit an image to 1) Make it look better and more realistic. 2) Make it look surreal and glossy.
Homework?!: Design a homepage.
Section Four: Fun Stuff if we have time!
  1. •Smart Objects
  2. •Layer Effects
  3. •Filters
  4. •Actions
 
 
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