Title Details

Jennifer Smith is cofounder of American Graphics Institute as well as a Certified Technical Trainer. She is a member of the AGI Creative Team, which develops and delivers global training programs for creative, marketing, and communications professionals.

Starting up

About Advanced Photoshop® CC Digital Classroom for Design Professionals 1

Prerequisites 1

System requirements 2

Starting Adobe Photoshop CC 2

Loading lesson files 5

Working with the video tutorials 6

Setting up for viewing the video tutorials 7

Viewing the video tutorials with the Adobe Flash Player 7

Additional resources 8

Lesson 1: Introduction to Advanced Navigational Features

Starting up 9

Speeding up your navigation process 10

Navigational tips 11

Practice with Zooming controls 11

Dynamic zooming and panning 12

Using the Navigator panel 13

Maximizing productivity with screen modes 14

Creating your own keyboard shortcuts 17

Using your new shortcut 19

Saving and summarizing your keyboard shortcuts 20

Editing the menu items 22

Using Photoshop Extras 22

Using rulers and guides 23

Using the Grid 25

Using the guides and grids to align text 26

Turning off and on Extras 28

Customizing your panels 28

Finding the panels you want 28

Customizing workspaces 29

Self study 31

Review 31

Lesson 2: Taking Advantage of Adobe Bridge

Starting up 33

Why use Adobe Bridge 34

Changing the view of Adobe Bridge 35

Workspaces 37

Using folders in Adobe Bridge 37

Making a Favorite 40

Stacking your images 42

Creating and locating metadata 42

Using keywords 45

Creating a Metadata Template 47

Searching for files using Adobe Bridge 48

Setting up unique keywords 48

Searching by name or keyword 49

Using the Filter panel 50

Using Adobe Bridge for automation 51

Batch renaming your files 51

Saving time with the Image Processor 53

Load Files into Photoshop Layers 55

Correcting images right from Adobe Bridge 56

Self study 58

Review 58

Lesson 3: Advanced Selection Techniques

Starting up 59

Review of the common selection tools 60

Rectangular Marquee tool 61

Elliptical Marquee tool 61

Building a selection 61

Transforming your selection 62

Saving your selection 63

Transforming to create a second selection 63

Combining your selections 64

Taking the Lasso tool to the max 66

Default Lasso tool 66

Polygonal Lasso tool 66

Magnetic Lasso tool 67

Alternating between the Polygonal and regular Lasso tool 67

Covering up a non-perfect selection 72

About the Quick Selection tool 73

Refining your selection 74

Going beyond the Magic Wand 78

Cleaning up your selection with Quick Mask 81

Self study 84

Review 84

Lesson 4: The Pen Tool: Beyond the Primer

Starting up 85

Practicing with the Pen tool 86

Creating controlled paths 87

About precision creation of Pen paths 87

Creating guides 87

Beginning the Pen path 88

Editing your arch 91

Continuing the path 92

Practicing with an image 95

Saving your path 100

What you can do with a path 101

Loading your path as a selection 101

Creating a vector mask of the gumball machine 104

Using a Pen path to create a Smart filter selection 104

Applying Unsharp mask to the selection 105

Stroking a Pen path 108

Defining a custom brush preset 108

Editing your brush 109

Applying your custom brush to the path 110

Saving the image for other applications 111

PNG-24 111

EPS, DCS 2.0 112

Self study 114

Review 114

Lesson 5: Color Correcting like a Pro

Starting up 115

Understanding color 116

Tools you will use 116

Using the Histogram panel 116

Intentionally creating a bad Histogram reading 119

What images need to be color corrected? 120

Choosing your color settings 121

Importance of RGB vs. CMYK color modes 121

Understanding Gamuts 122

Working in the RGB mode 122

Locating the white and black point 126

Defining highlight and shadow 128

Adjusting the midtones 130

Balancing the neutrals in an image 131

Adding additional curve corrections 134

Adding more variation to your curve adjustment 137

Sharpening the image 138

Painting your filter on your image 141

Adjusting the Blending of the filter 142

Self study 143

Review 143

Lesson 6: Painting and Retouching

Starting up 145

Content Painting tools 146

Retouching an image 146

Repositioning the branch 147

Creating a new layer from the selection149

Adding an adjustment layer 151

Adding a vector mask 155

Retouching the frog’s nose 156

Organizing your Layers panel 161

Using the Clone Stamp tool 162

Adding a vignette 168

Self study 171

Review 171

Lesson 7: Creating Compositions

Starting up 173

Reviewing Smart Objects 174

Applying Smart Filters 174

Adding a second image to the composition 176

Adding an image with the place feature 179

Masking a layer 181

The Adaptive Wide Angle filter 183

Using the Clone Stamp tool to copy a window 185

Adding an additional building 187

Blending the church 189

Removing some of the architecture 190

Blending the church using Adjustment Layers 192

Final flourish 194

Using a color look-up table 195

Self study 197

Review 197

Lesson 8: Creating Special Effects

Starting up . 199

Using Oil Paint as a Smart Filter 200

Exploring Oil Paint options 201

The power of Smart Filters 203

Deleting a Smart Filter 204

Using Camera Raw as a Smart Filter 204

Adding Layer Style effects 207

Adding lighting effects 208

Adding interesting lighting effects 209

Adjusting the lighting 210

Adding sunlight effects 211

Creating a Depth of Field effect 212

Adding text effects 213

Adding Swash Characters 215

Self study 216

Review 216

Lesson 9: Advanced Use of the Vector Tools

Starting up 217

Taking advantage of vector objects in Photoshop CC 218

Location of the vector tools 218

Opening the image 218

Starting with a vector shape 219

Adding a mask 222

Adding vector text 224

Converting your text to a path 227

Adding a stroke to the text 228

Adding a drop shadow 230

Using a custom shape 233

Pasting vector objects from Illustrator 235

Adding the Illustrator logo 237

Saving your file for use outside of Photoshop 241

Self Study 242

Review 242

Lesson 10: Creating Images for the Web and Application Design

Starting up 243

Optimizing graphics for on-screen presentation 244

Resizing the image 244

Adjusting the image size 247

Applying the Unsharp Mask filter to an image 249

Selecting the best image format 250

Choosing the right file format 250

Choosing the best file format for your image 251

Saving images as JPEGs 251

Choosing the quality of a JPEG 251

Previewing your image 254

Creating a transparency effect in a JPEG image 255

Saving your settings 257

Saving images as GIFs 258

Optimizing the GIF image 260

Using the color table 261

Adding a matte to a GIF 264

Animating a GIF 265

Saving as a PNG 269

Slicing an image 273

Viewing the completed file 273

Creating slices 274

Changing the attributes of the slices 274

Saving slices out of Photoshop 276

Self study 278

Review 278

Lesson 11: Zipping it up with Automation Tools

Starting up 279

What is an action? 280

Creating a simple action 280

Creating your own action 283

Adding an Image Size and a Save action 284

Playing your action 286

Editing your script to change settings 286

Creating a Droplet 287

Using a Droplet 288

Using the Panorama feature in Photoshop 290

Creating your own keyboard shortcuts 290

Using actions in Button mode 292

Self study 293

Review 293

Lesson 12: Using Photoshop for 3D

Starting up 295

Creating 3D objects 296

Creating primitives 296

Extruding paths 298

Extruding 3D text 300

Viewing and transforming 3D objects 301

Working with 3D camera tools 301

Using the 3D object tools 303

Object appearances 306

Lighting 306

Materials 307

Changing the properties of the extruded text 310

Rendering 310

Textures and painting 311

Adding texture to a 3D object 311

Painting a 3D object 312

Using Photoshop 3D in production workflows 313

Working with custom meshes 313

Downloading external 3D content 313

Self study 314

Review 314