Photoshop World Update – Day 2

Hopefully I haven’t kept too many of you waiting too long to get a day 2 update from Photoshop World. Sure we’re at Photoshop, but heck, who says we can’t learn new things beyond Photoshop. Though we learned a lot more new techniques in Photoshop today, some of the highlights of the day were related to a lot of other new technology. Here are today’s highlights:

• Photoshop? How about Indesign? A few of us were excited to attend 2 of the InDesign courses offered by Terry White. CS3 isn’t released yet and so it was awesome to get to see both classes in InDesign CS3. I think you all will be impressed with some of the new features, to include more advanced and productive ways of placing images/objects, text, along with new and improved document previews. It was awesome to see that there’s no more scrolling in multiple page documents – you get to see a thumbnail preview now! And because I’ve never taken any formal InDesign CS3 courses, it was great seeing some of the other tips and techniques to include various shortcuts and productivity tips. And of course it’s always a treat learning how to make a pdf more interactive! Terry’s got a lot of knowledge to share – so check out his creative suite video podcasts.
• The only Photoshop course I took today was with Matt Kloskowski where he went over a lot about automation and actions. Though the automation and actions in Photoshop were great information for speeding up your productivity, I found the BEST tip I’ve learned thus far is the zoom abilities in Mac OSX which he and others have used throughout presentations to zoom into portions of the screen. Luckily he had a moment to show us this nifty little trick. I’d love to tell you more but I’m sure you’ll see soon if you’re taking any of my courses. Matt also has an awesome web site called Photoshop Killer Tips – and if you’re anxious to learn more about actions, which really will help you work faster through tedious tasks, then check out some of his actions tutorials.
• One of the highlights of the day was seeing Katrin Eismann speak twice. We caught the end of one of her retouching courses in the tech expo. Afterwards Daissy and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to speak with one of the absolute best speakers at Photoshop World. The last class of the day several of us decided to take a chance and attend her class on Lightroom. Much like the first time I saw her speak in 2004, I wasn’t so sure if it was a class that would interest me. I’ve read a lot about Lightroom and originally I thought it seemed to be intended for serious photographers – however, after today it’s on my wishlist because Katrin certainly convinced us how it can be useful for anyone who deals with any type of image editing. She encouraged us to think of Lightroom as a photo “enhancing” program and Photoshop as a photo “manipulating” program. I was in awe as I got to see some of the techniques she used in Lightroom to enhance photos – to include the ability to adjust various hues, saturation, tonal changes without having to make painful selections like you usually have to do in Photoshop. What’s even better is that Lightroom never edits your actual file, it instead creates metadata files that are associated to the original file – so there’s never a need to save versions. I love how easy it was for her to allow us to forget how complicated Photoshop can make image enhancement – because it’s definitely easier in Lightroom! If you’re interested in learning more about Lightroom you can check out Lightroom Killer Tips.
• We’re learning that Adobe Bridge CS3 is going to be essential in using the CS3 Creative Suite! We haven’t been in a class where they don’t use it to speed up their workflow. The integration between programs is awesome to see thus far!

Hope you enjoy the resources – more to follow at the end of day three!