Dynamic Digital Collage Thursday 9:00 - 4:30 $130  
  Mike Jennings    


Student Level: Intermediate – NOT for beginners, see Determining your level below
Type of Workshop: Instructional and Project

 

    Have you used Adobe Photoshop but long to make sophisticated digital collages? Have you tried to create multilayered collage art in Photoshop and just gotten frustrated with the program?

    You will learn to use Photoshop to create digital collages with sophisticated layering. You will learn to adjust size, position and rotation of digital elements to compose a collage. You will learn to make layers interact with one another using blending modes and painting with transparency. Find out several ways to quickly "knock out" (remove) backgrounds, leaving just the element you want. Add depth and dimension difficult to achieve in the physical domain using layer styles and transformations. Master the Photoshop Text tool. Filter your elements for fabulous effects.

    Materials fee of $12 payable to Instructor at class time includes:
    A USB flash drive containing sample images from my own library, including vintage postcards, exotic textures, ephemera and other interesting elements. The flash drive and its contents are yours to keep and reuse as you like.

    Optional Kit fee of $50 includes a multiplatform CDROM with a handpicked selection of 14 unusual typefaces that I have discovered to be uniquely suited to digital collage. The fonts on this disc, bundled at a reduced price just for this class by the foundry, will add a distinct element of sophistication and finish to your pieces no matter how you use them, and I will be using them in the class examples. All of the kit fee goes directly to the type foundry. (I will accept credit cards.)

    Supply List:
  • A Mac or Windows laptop or whatever computer you can carry with you. It should have at least 1.5GB of RAM and have been manufactured in about the last four years or else you will be very frustrated in this workshop. It should have Photoshop or Photoshop Extended CS3, CS4 or CS5. If you don't already have one of these, see "PHOTOSHOP NOTES" below. You must use a mouse in the class, even if you are comfortable with the trackpad or other built-in pointing device. I will have a spare laptop or two but you will need to contact me in advance.
  • You will need the full version - not Elements -- of Photoshop, version CS3, CS4, or CS5. (The "Extended" version is not necessary but works if that's what you've got.) If you don't already have it, see Photoshop Notes below
  • If you have a graphics tablet such as the Intuos series or the Bamboo Fun, this would be a good class to use it in. This makes working in Photoshop more natural and less frustrating and fiddly. I will not be teaching how to make the most of these, however.

Determining your student experience level:

This is not a class for beginners. To make the class run smoothly, it is imperative that all students have a certain level of familiarity with the computer, and with Photoshop. For example, you should be comfortable with the common skills listed below. If you're not comfortable with these before the class, please don't sign up or get basic training in advance, otherwise you will find the class very frustrating.

You must be comfortable with the following:

1) Saving a file somewhere on your hard drive or USB flash drive and finding it later from within Photoshop.

2) Selecting everything in a Photoshop document and copying it, then pasting it into a different Photoshop document.

3) Comfortability with terms such as palette, dialog, menu, cursor, window, dock, font, document, tab, drag and drop. Mac users should know what I mean when I refer to the Finder and the Command key.

4) Basic familiarity with common Photoshop tools such as the Move tool, the Brush tool, the Magic Wand, the Lasso tools, the Eyedropper, and the Crop tool.

5) Photoshop's foreground and background color controls.

6) You must know how to find out and communicate which version of Photoshop you have.

Visit http://www.dearhubby.com/savvy.html for more detailed information and pointers to internet tutorials.

Photoshop Notes :

If you do not already have the full version of Photoshop, you can download a trial version for free from Adobe. Note that it expires after 30 days, so wait until just prior to the class before installing it. Most of the techniques I will demonstrate have a corresponding feature in the less-expensive Photoshop Elements, but many have been renamed and relocated in recent versions and I can't teach the two programs in the same class. Your best bet is to learn it in Photoshop, then find the corresponding features in Elements using the handout after the class and before the trial expires. Alternatively you can hit up any students that you may know and purchase Photoshop for $300 instead of the $650 retail price.

Questions? Email Mike at mike@hannahgrey.com
Website: http://www.dearhubby.com