Learn how to make your own Christmas cards!!

LAST CHANCE TO SIGN UP

September 26 - Hands on class AND get free card stock and envelopes

It's almost time to be sending out those Seasons Greetings cards - what a great way to show off your images.  There is no better way to say thank you or to send cordial holiday greetings than with a custom made greeting card using one of your own images. 

But using Photoshop to print a card on your printer can often be frustrating and confusing.  There are hardware limitations; layout and alignment issues that all must be considered. 

In this class you'll learn how to...

• Lay out your greeting card

• Prepare images to use on a greeting card

• Set special settings for your print driver

• Papers and supplies available for printing greeting cards

• Design ideas for cards for every occasion.

All students will receive a FREE package of greeting card paper and envelopes to get you started.  And please note, this is NOT a class on how to use my Greeting Card Designer actions and effects.  You will learn to develop cards from scratch and create some awesome designs. 

2008 Workshop Schedule Coming Together

I have been working on the 2008 workshop schedule and I've got some exciting events planned.  The full schedule will be announced in the next issue of eNews but here is a peak at some of the awesome events planned.

• For the first time since 2002, I'll be going back to Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies.  (September 10 - 14, 2008)  This is a once-in-a-lifetime location and one you will not want to miss.
  
• The Deep in the Heart of Texas workshop in April is being changed.  (April 9 - 13, 2008)Say goodbye to the Rose Mansion and hello to the Hangar Hotel in Fredericksburg.  The agenda for this workshop includes Texas wildflower photography and special lighting issues.  We're even going to photograph a vintage aircraft using artificial light and some creative out-of-the-box techniques with our good friend Griff Smith.
  
• Digital Chicks - We're off to historic Jefferson in East Texas to enjoy a pampered retreat weekend in the gracious Excelsior Hotel. (May 16 - 18, 2008)

Fall Class Registration Now Open

All Fall classes are now open for registration.  This semester's lineup of classes is one of the best ever with two new classes. 

• Discovering the Secrets of GreatPhotography

• Pixel Pixs: Introduction to Digital Photography

• Point, Shoot, WOW!   (NEW)

• Studio Lighting Basics

• Digital Workflow  (NEW)

• 7th Annual Digital Revolution

• Photoshop CS - Class 1  (Updated)

• Photoshop CS - Class 2  (Updated)

• Photoshop Elements - Class 1  (Updated)(SOLD OUT)

• Photoshop Elements - Class 2  (Updated)

• Creating Greeting Cards with Photoshop

For details and to register for any class, visit my website.
  

New Classes

Point, Shoot, Wow! - If you're a beginner or amateur photographers who wants to know how to add that professional look to your photography and make your friends and family jealous when you produce photos that make everyone go WOW!!!  You don’t need fancy cameras or lots of expensive digital editing software.  You just need to know the GreatPhotography Point, Shoot and WOW Tips.

Unraveling The Digital Workflow - This class is intended for the more serious photographer that faces the challenges of organizing and managing an ever growing inventory of digital images.

Finding and Tagging People in Your Images

If you use tags in the Photoshop Elements Organizer then this is a feature that you'll fall in love with.  (Bridge users, you'll wish Adobe would add this to the Bridge.) 

When you use the Find Faces For Tagging command, Photoshop Elements isolates and displays faces in photos so that you can quickly tag them. Thumbnails of individual faces appear in the Face Tagging dialog box, in which you can apply existing tags, or create and apply new tags. As you apply tags to faces in the Face Tagging dialog box, Photoshop Elements removes those faces, making it easier to find and tag the remaining faces. You can select Show Already Tagged Faces if you want the faces to remain after you tag them.

1. In the Photo Browser, select the photos of people that you’d like to tag.
2. Choose Find > Find Faces For Tagging, or click the Find Faces For Tagging icon in the Tags palette.
   1. If you press Ctrl as you choose Edit > Find Faces For Tagging, Photoshop Elements will produce more accurate results (for example, it will find more faces in the background of a busy photo), but it will take longer for the faces to appear.
   2. Photoshop Elements processes the photos and searches for faces. Thumbnails of the faces display in the Face Tagging dialog box.
3. In the dialog box, do any of the following:
   1. To apply a tag to a face, drag the tag onto the face or drag the face onto the tag. You can tag multiple selected photos at once.
   2. You don’t have to wait until all faces are identified before applying tags.
   3. Applying a tag to selected faces while the search for faces is still in progress
   4. To create a new tag, click the New button in the upper right corner. Choose a category and type a name for the tag.
   5. To view the entire photo thumbnail for a face, select the face and view the photo thumbnail in the bottom right corner of the window.
   6. To select all the faces associated with a photo, select the photo thumbnail in the bottom right corner.
   7. To remove a face from the Face Tagging dialog box without tagging it, select it and click Don’t Tag Selected Items. (If you later decide you want to tag it, select it in the Organizer and choose Edit > Find Faces For Tagging again.)
   8. Removing a thumbnail of an image that is not a real face
   9. Select Show Tagged Faces to view all the faces you’ve tagged. Deselect this option if you want to automatically hide faces after you tag them.
   10. If you want to change a tag that you’ve applied to a face, select Show Tagged Faces.
4. When you’re done tagging faces, click Done.

Photoshop CS3 Tip

You can use the History palette to jump to any recent state of the image created during the current working session. Each time you apply a change to an image, the new state of that image is added to the palette.

For example, if you select, paint, and rotate part of an image, each of those states is listed separately in the palette. When you select one of the states, the image reverts to how it looked when that change was first applied. You can then work from that state.

By default, the History palette lists the previous 20 states.  When you are using tools like the brush tool, each stroke is one history state.  As you can see, you can easily overrun the history quickly, limiting your ability to fix editing problems.  You can, however, create a snapshot at anytime.  Snapshots record the current state of your image, giving you the ability to back up to that point at any time during the session.

You can also use the History palette to delete image states and, in Photoshop, to create a document from a state or snapshot.

To display the History palette, choose Window > History, or click the History palette tab.

Keep the following in mind when using the History palette:

·         Program-wide changes, such as changes to palettes, color settings, actions, and preferences, are not reflected in the History palette, because they are not changes to a particular image.

·         By default, the History palette lists the previous 20 states (Photoshop), or 32 states (ImageReady). You can change the number of remembered states by setting a preference. Older states are automatically deleted to free more memory for Photoshop. To keep a particular state throughout your work session, make a snapshot of the state.

·         Once you close and reopen the document, all states and snapshots from the last working session are cleared from the palette.

·         By default, a snapshot of the initial state of the document is displayed at the top of the palette.

·         States are added to the bottom of the list. That is, the oldest state is at the top of the list, the most recent one at the bottom.

·         Each state is listed with the name of the tool or command used to change the image.

·         By default, when you select a state, the states below it are dimmed. This way you can easily see which changes will be discarded if you continue working from the selected state.

·         By default, selecting a state and then changing the image eliminates all states that come after it.

·         If you select a state and then change the image, eliminating the states that came after, you can use the Undo command to undo the last change and restore the eliminated states.

·         By default, deleting a state deletes that state and those that came after it. If you choose the Allow Non-Linear History option, deleting a state deletes only that state.