Digital Photography Workshop
Friday the 10th, 8:30am – 5:00pm
Speaker: Jack Davis

"Honestly, I don't know the first thing about Macs."

Oh, really? Sure, it's easy to brag about how little you know about these things, but so few people are willing to put their money with their mouth is. Attend this session and silence all the nay-sayers. How basic is this session? Turning the Mac on and off is lesson two. Sure, by the end, you'll no longer be a novice...but you'll be able to thrill and amaze people with your tales of compressing a whole month's worth of trial-and-error learning into one single class.

There are American History books that spend 500 pages covering the whole thing from start to finish, and then there are the ones that cover just one thing in obsessive detail. The latter leaves you with ready answer to the question "So: the quill that Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence: what species of bird did it come from?" But the former approach leaves you with a broad understanding of absolutely everything, and the relationship between all of the various bits.

So the goal of this session is to make sure you know just exactly what Mac OS X is capable of, from user-level features that you'll use every day to aspects of Unix system administration that will make you glad that you're free to never ever ever touch that sort of stuff if you don't want to, not even with a ten-foot-pole strapped to a twelve-foot-pole.

If you are new to iLife, come see what happens when you take five best of breed multimedia applications — iTunes for managing music, iPhoto for digital photography, iMovie HD for editing digital video, GarageBand for creating your own music, and iDVD for creating your own DVDs — and integrate them so they work seamlessly. Suddenly it all connects!

Let your imagination soar: The iLife 05 software applications let you do fun, creative things with your pictures, music, and movies in ways that PC users can only dream about — then you share your joy with family and friends every which way from email and the internet to print and DVD. An you can do all these things and more, quite nicely, without thumbing through a manual.

Learn why this suite of tightly integrated applications continues to lead the digital media revolution.

You have been using iLife for a while but what can you really do with this program? With iLife '05, you can easily create stunning softcover books; import, organize, and edit RAW photos; and stun them with fully customizable slideshows using iPhoto 5. Edit high-definition 16:9 video from the newest camcorders and create movies automatically with iMovie HD's new Magic iMovie feature. Drag and drop video clips, pictures, and music into the new animated drop zones found in iDVD 5 templates. Or create multi-track recordings in GarageBand 2. Of course, iTunes seamlessly integrates with iPhoto, iMovie HD, iDVD and GarageBand and syncs with every member of the iPod family. Come spend a day exploring the many intermediate features of iLife 05.

What is a Power User? According to Dr. Mac's Really Abridged Dictionary: Power User (pou'er yoo'zer) n. 1. Someone who uses a Macintosh better, faster, or more elegantly than you do. 2. Someone who can answer Macintosh-related questions you can't.

Don't miss this unique opportunity to spend some quality time with "one of the world's leading (self-proclaimed) authorities on Mac OS X," and the author of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger For Dummies. The session will feature a myriad of tips, hints, tutorials, shortcuts, product demos, timesaving software recommendations, where to find what you need on the Web, and much more.

Mac OS X version 10.4 "Tiger" introduces Automator, a new application that automates anything on your computer quickly and easily. Using the power of Mac OS X, Automator controls your applications and files, automating — in an instant — what you need done with them. Automator will change the way you use your Macintosh. There's no scripting or coding, it's drag-and-drop easy. It's truly "Automation for the rest of us!"

Automator Product Manager, Sal Soghoian, gives you a personalized tour of this innovative application and you'll learn when and how to use Automator to make automating complex or repetitive tasks a breeze!

If you want to make music with GarageBand, this session is the perfect first step. The premise is to record, mix, and master a complete rock and roll song — using guitar, bass, drums, and vocals — in 3.5 hours or less.

Along the way you'll discover cost-effective hardware products that make using GarageBand better; how Apple Loops can save you time and effort; how to record vocals and acoustic instruments that sound awesome; using GarageBand's software instruments effectively; and lots of other cool stuff guaranteed to help you produce better sounding music with GarageBand.

Learn the secrets of digital photography on our Mexican cruise. In this full-day class you’ll quickly discover how to become a better photographer and tap the benefits of your digital camera. This Digital Photography workshop will give you the power to capture special moments and preserve precious memories—for snap shots to put in an album or oversized prints suitable for a gallery!

Learn how to:

• Tell beautiful, visual stories by capturing great digital photos

• Use natural light and flash the right way

• Use your camera’s menus and functions to optimize what your camera can do

• Tap the value of a digital camera’s features such as exposure compensation, scene modes, and when to shoot RAW

Part 1: Light, Camera, Action
Friday the 10th, 8:30am – Noon

Light is the primary subject of all of our photographs. In this illuminating, four-hour session we’ll discuss the properties of light (and how it relates to space, depth, and focus) and how to use an understanding of light plus the various camera controls and features to produce technically-proficient photographs from the subtle to the dynamic.

• Understanding the properties of light

• Effective use of traditional camera controls

• Metering and exposure

• F stop/depth of field

• Shutter speed/motion control

• ISO

• Understanding digital camera menus

• Resolution

• File formats—RAW and JPEG demystified

• White balance

• Tone control

• Sharpening

• Putting it all together when shooting pictures

Part 2: Making Better Photographs
Friday the 10th, 1:30pm – 5pm

How do you put a little bit of soul into your pictures? Having control of your equipment is necessary, but only the first step. In Part 2 of this Workshop we will discuss how to move beyond technically well-executed documentation photography to exciting images that allow us to share, in an artful and memorable way, the experience of the moment we chose to record.

• Human vs. camera vision

• Perspective and point of view

• Camera position and lens choice

• Understanding the frame

• Organizing the visual elements

• Keep it simple and the use of negative space

• Design tools for “drawing” the photograph

• Clues to three-dimensionality

• Exploring the subject

• Photographing people

• Travel photography techniques

• Close-up photography techniques

Photoshop is a vast and complex program. It does certain things very, very well, and it does others very, very strangely. Using the program effectively is a matter of knowing which tools work best and when best to use them. Attend this introductory class and learn how to use the right features in the right order and save yourself a lot of heartache.

• What Photoshop can do

• Workspace and navigation

• Basic color management

• Highlights, shadows, and midtones

• Adjusting brightness levels

• Fixing a color cast

• Hue and saturation

• Colorizing a grayscale image

• Image size and resolution

• Rotate, crop, and perspective

Newly enhanced in CS2, corrective filters rank among the program’s oldest and finest capabilities. Besides permitting you to sharpen the contrast of an image, blur away the defects, and remove digital noise and JPEG artifacts, they can help you hone in on exactly those details that need help the most. Combined with Photoshop’s Masking function, filters make it possible to separate even the most complex foreground subject from its background and composite that image into a new setting. Sound amazing? You have no idea.

• Filtering basics

• The new filters in Photoshop CS2

• Unsharp Mask and High Pass

• Removing motion blur with Smart Sharpen

• The wonders of Remove Noise

• Gaussian Blur and Median

• Creating an Edge Mask

• Using the Color Range command

• Extracting image elements

• Blue screen and sky

• Full-on Masking

Photoshop CS2 is the most ambitious, exciting, and downright seminal update to Adobe’s flagship image editor in the past five years. Vanishing Point, envelope-style image warping, floating-point exposure, and the stand-alone Bridge all qualify as flat-out great. Then there’s my favorite feature, smart objects, which let you do three things you could never do before: First, you can apply non-destructive transformations. Second, you can replicate a layer and edit all copies simultaneously. And third, you can adjust the composition of imported camera raw and Illustrator layers long after importing them. If flexibility and power appeal to you, join Deke and learn how to make them yours.

• The new Adobe Bridge

• The revolutionary Vanishing Point plug-in

• Combining multiple exposures into a
single HDR image

• Applying free-form distortions with
warp and envelope

• Making a smart object

• Non-destructive transformations

• Creating alias layers, all linked to a
single original

• Placing camera raw and Illustrator artwork

• Modifying placed layers well into the future

Quick and easy ways to use Photoshop’s built-in presets (and hundreds of complimentary Wow presets that will be provided in class) to create special effects on-time and on-budget.

• The phenomenal power, flexibility, and speed of Layers Styles

• How to create dimensional effects like chrome, rock, and glass (and beyond) — instantly and without filters

• One-click framing and tinting techniques to tie disparate photographs together — separately or as a collage

• Quick template-based collaging for weddings, groups, or editorials

• Single image collages and ghosted backgrounds

Creating realistic textures, the effects of lights and shadows, and the ability to make an image jump off the page will be covered in this session. Filters? There are many of them in Photoshop. What happens when you use them for other than their intended purpose? What happens when you put a few of them together? You will create images that are more realistic than a camera could ever achieve.

The ability to bend things on a curve has been one of the most asked-for features, yet it has always been there. Bert will demonstrate the use of the Displace Filter to make controlled, fluid distortions. The Liquify Filter will also be explored for distortion effects. Distorting with the Transform function will be explored for perspective matching and the creation of realistic reflections.

• Working with Filters

• Using the Liquify command

• Light and shadows

• Reflections

• Integrating Photoshop into other programs
- After Effects
- 3D software

Learn everything you ever wanted to know but were afraid to ask about color management. We’ll start with a look at the basic science that underpins color management — don’t worry, the session is guaranteed equation-free — because doing so helps you understand not only how color management works, but also why it sometimes fails to do so.

Next, we’ll look at profiles, and their relationship to the devices they represent, with a view to developing sound troubleshooting skills.

Last but not least, we’ll delve deep into Photoshop’s color management features, mine the mysteries of working spaces, and look at what it takes to build and maintain a complete capture-to-output workflow.

With the advent of Camera Raw 3.0, I look at Photoshop as a plug-in for Camera Raw, rather than the other way around. In this session, you’ll learn the many benefits of shooting raw. Then you’ll learn to exploit the vast amount of information raw files contain by making use of Adobe Camera Raw’s powerful features, so that when your images land in Photoshop, you’ll have very little to do to them except press Save and choose a file format.

Possibly the greatest challenge that digital shooters face is the sheer amount of data they generate. You’ll learn that the key to avoiding drowning in data is to master metadata and make it your friend. You’ll learn how to build a complete digital raw workflow using Bridge, Camera Raw, and Photoshop using automation wherever possible so that you still have time to shoot, and to have a life.

The experienced user knows there are a million tools in Photoshop to adjust your images for maximum impact, but which ones work best, work fastest, and are most “photographer friendly”? In this session you will learn all sorts of workflow-enhancing techniques including: 101 uses for Auto Levels, how to create nondestructive dodge and burn layers, advanced gray-scale conversions, eyedropper color correcting, stained teeth whitening, red-eye neutralizing, blotchy skin unifying, and the only way to use Photoshop’s healing brush — all with an emphasis on quality, flexibility, and speed.

• Which editing tools are best to use when fixing images — and which ones to avoid

• Quick tone and color adjustments that leave your original image intact

• How to quickly fix under and over exposed images using Photoshop features like Shadow / Highlight

• Creating nondestructive, fast, and flexible repair layers for fixing, dodging and burning, and color correcting

• Simplified levels, curves, and sharpening techniques

• Advanced gray-scale conversions using Channel Mixer