Photoshop for Photographers

This range of courses was developed to build the necessary skills

Photoshop for Photographers – Intermediate

is a 12.5 hour course — held over five sessions of 2.5 hours each.

A follow-on from the “Photoshop for Beginners” short course at Challenger TAFE — participants will further develop their Photoshop skills & knowledge and practice its application to enhance and retouch photographs.

Content includes: using Adjustment layers & Blending modes, creating composites, automating with Actions, Droplets, & the Batch and Image Processor commands; use Content Aware Scale & Fill; simulate a shallow Depth of Field with Lens Blur, focus stack to expand the Depth of Field, stitch images for panoramas, utilise masks to build a Photo Montage e.g. replace a sky, construct a Picture Package with Smart Objects, utilise Layer blend modes to add depth & complexity into artistic images, employ a range of sharpening techniques, retouch with perspective using Vanishing Point, and create a photographers comp card; and intermediate retouching.

Adobe ® Photoshop CS5 (v12) will be used in class, but the content is also suited to users of CS3 (v10) and CS4 (v11). It is much less applicable to earlier versions of the software.

Photoshop Lightroom

Photoshop Elements Essentials

Going RAW

Shooting in RAW allows you a huge amount of control over post capture variables like Exposure and White Balance. Using Adobe ® Photoshops inbuilt Camera RAW converter, we’ll explore the options available and how to use them for bulk image processing to achieve optimum final output in an efficient fashion.
*Please note that this course is available as either a single full-day or 3-part version.

Chiaroscuro

The chiaroscuro concept is from originally from Fine Art and quite literally means ‘the interplay of light & shadow.’ The photographic tools for achieving this are the dodge and burn tools, though in both the wet darkroom and within Photoshop, they are somewhat limited. We’ll explore some of the less obvious ways of achieving these types of effects, and their pros and cons.

Fixing Faces

The human face in a photograph captures a great deal of our attention, requiring more exacting editing than any other element. We’ll explore some of the techniques specific to enhancing faces, and examine their pros and cons.

The human face when used in portraiture and advertising is often idealised and used to invoke a particular emotional response. We’ll consider a range of studio, glamour and fashion looks in portraiture, and examine various ways of achieving them digitally.

Photo Effects 1 & 2

A combination of our 2 most popular Photo Effects courses delivered together in a single day.

Studio Style and Grading are often considered one of the capabilities that separate an amateur photographer from a professional. These “digital darkroom” effects can bring a little something extra to a colour or B&W image — affecting the visual emphasis, implied narrative and emotional impact.

We’ll explore a broad range of photo effects — from the pseudo wet darkroom and beyond — and some of the less obvious ways of achieving them, then weigh up their pros and cons. Includes getting the best B&W rendition, toning techniques, adding grain, Infrared looks, Cross Processing, Solarisation, etc.

Photo Retouching

A Photo Montage is a composite file combining multiple images in a photo realistic manner. We’ll look at several techniques to help achieve those effect including using the Extract filter. Photographs of models in fashion magazines and the like, are often digitally processed with Extreme Retouching. We’ll consider a variety of these techniques for body sculpting, changing facial proportions, etc.

Enrol here for any of the above courses