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We offer a comprehensive Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Training course
Traditionally software for digital imaging serves two purposes:
- applications for cataloging and organizing your photos
- powerful applications for editing individual images.
Photoshop Lightroom does both, it is a powerful way to organize, export, print and develop RAW images – the default file format for most modern DLSR cameras.
Photographers use the RAW file format to capture image data in its least processed form. Most consumer cameras compress or slightly tweak a photo as soon as it’s shot, and RAW skips this step. The file sizes of RAW images are larger and the photos don’t look as “finished,” but working with RAW files also offers more control over the final product.
Lightroom is designed to make it easy to quickly organize all your image files, RAW or otherwise, highlighting, ranking and tagging the ones you like. You can also apply enhancements and corrections to the photo before exporting it to another application or directly to the web or print.
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Posted by Heather Buckley in Photoshop on April 17th, 2009 | No Comments »
Learn a range of tips to improve your images on our Photoshop Course.
This is an easy, quick and effective technique to get rid of any red eye you may encounter whilst working in photoshop:
Next to the dodge and burn tools there is a button called the sponge tool,
Firstly select this option and then set the desaturation level to about 50% or, if you prefer, another percentage, although 50 is the safest.
What you then need to do is to select the correct sized brush, this should be about as large as your figure’s pupil, but make sure that it is no bigger.
Then, after you have done this, all that remains to be done is to simply click on the pupil of your subject until you are satisfied that the red eye is sufficiently gone.
And there you have it, a simple and easy way to reduce red eye.
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Posted by Heather Buckley in Photoshop on March 25th, 2009 | No Comments »
Upgrading Photoshop is expensive and some may wonder if it is worth upgrading to Adobe Photoshop CS4. If you’ve been trying to determine whether to upgrade to Photoshop CS4 look first at the new features listed on the official adobe Photoshop site. One great new feature the use GPU and OpenGL acceleration (to ordinary people this means Photoshop should be much quicker). A GPU is dedicated to calculations needed for graphics. OpenGL tells your GPU what it is working with and how to manipulate it. It will make your Graphics Card do some of the work your central processing system used to do.
To make use of the new GPU accelerations, your graphics card must have a minimum of 128 MB of memory and support OpenGL 2.0 along with something called Shader Model 3.0. If you’re not sure if you’ve got all these, Photoshop CS4 can tell you.
- Go to Edit >> Preferences >> Performance and look for the check box for “GPU Settings.”
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- If your GPU qualifies, the model will be listed and the box will be checked.
- If this area is blank, Photoshop doesn’t think your system has what it takes.
- If you think you do have a GPU that is up to the task, make sure your video driver is updated.
With GPU acceleration enabled, the experience of using Photoshop is greatly improved. Now when you zoom in and out, the size of everything changes evenly smoothly and, the view remains sharp at all magnification ratios. When you zoom above 500% you can now turn on a pixel grid view that outlines single pixels so you can see what you are editing.
If you hold down the H key (active the hand tool) then left mouse click on your image you can activate the “Bird’s Eye View” feature to show you where you are at. The view will zoom out to display you the total image and a bounding box appears centered where you clicked, move your mouse around and the box will follow. Let go and the image will zoom back into the scale you were at previously but at the new location. These tools are smooth and fast.
Holding down the space bar allows you to “flick” scroll the image with your mouse, by clicking and dragging in the direction you want to scroll and the image.
If you’re already using Photoshop and wish to upgrade to CS4 and your graphics card doesn’t support this feature, get a new graphics card.
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Posted by Heather Buckley in Photoshop on February 24th, 2009 | No Comments »
The eyedropper is an important basic tool in Photoshop. The Eyedropper can be used to pick out colour in an image, change foreground and background colours. Learn how to use all the Photoshop tools on our Photoshop Course.
Shaped like a pipette, it is an excellent tool for colour matching purposes when you have difficulty in finding the right colour, the eye-dropper tool allows you to alter the prominent colour so that it has a shade that is identical to colour on the canvas.
To change the foreground color, click with the eyedropper on the desired colour anywhere in the current image, or in any other open image, active or not. To change the background color, Alt-click, with the eyedropper, on the desired colour in any open window.
The keyboard shortcut for the eyedropper tool is I.
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Posted by Heather Buckley in Photoshop on February 27th, 2007 | No Comments »
The following pages provide a useful reference guide for trainers, including advice, how-tos, hints and tips. We also run a comprehensive hands-on Train the Trainer training course, delivered by an award winning trainer.
If you have been training for some years, either in a dedicated training role within your organisation, or as a manager with a training brief, you will have developed many skills which have moved you on from the novice trainer you once were! If you remember your first training events, you were more than likely nervous, probably over-prepared and maybe inflexible and unable to respond to the real needs of your group. Now, with these nightmares behind you, you can reflect on your achievements and consider in what ways you can still improve your training work.
If you are new to the training role, you will soon realise both the challenge and the satisfaction being a trainer can bring. To be a tool for the motivation and empowerment of others is heady stuff!
Remember: Training is a two-way process: both the trainee and the trainer learn and both teach! Certainly when drawing up training plans, both need to be taken into consideration.
Trainees must:
- Be prepared and fully briefed for the learning experience
- Be given sufficient time, resources and support to complete and implement their learning
- Preferably have input into their own learning plan and what is important to them
- Be motivated
- Be willing to learn
- Be given feedback on their performance, during and after training
Trainers must:
- Be fully conversant with the requirements of the trainees and their managers
- Include input from trainees in their own learning plan, where possible
- Make available adequate resources for the training event
- Provide a safe space for trainees to participate with confidence
- Give feedback during and after the training event
- Ensure that the whole organisation is aware of possible repercussions of their training events
How we learn and how we teach
When you plan your training event, it must appeal to all trainees. For example, you must appeal to those who like visuals and those who like discourse; those who benefit from activity and those who profit from greater reflection. How others learn will influence the way you teach your topic.
Key points that assist adult learning
- The chance to review progress
- The opportunity to discuss similar experiences with others
- An atmosphere where learners can discuss openly
- Considering the application of their learning in the workplace
- Getting feedback on their development
To summarise three different theories of learning:
- the trainer sets the goals
- the learner sets his/her own goals
- the trainer stimulates learning by provoking curiosity, exploration and achievement
In most training situations, you will have a mix of all three. So sometimes:
- …you set the goals for your trainees
- …your trainees are expected to set (and reach) their own goals
- …you assist your trainees learning by stimulating their thinking through a mix of directed home study, tutorials, assignments, project work and so on
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Posted by Heather Buckley in Train the Trainer on March 20th, 2007 | No Comments »
Don’t think of yourself as a trainer… since that puts the focus on what YOU do.
Remember:
It’s not about what YOU do… it’s about how your learners feel about what THEY can do as a result of the learning experience you created and helped to deliver.
Rather than think of yourself as a teacher or trainer, try getting used to thinking of yourself as “a person who creates learning experiences… a person who helps others learn.” In other words, put a lot more emphasis on the learning and a lot less emphasis on the teaching.
Learn to create the learning experience on our comprehensive Train the Trainer course.
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Posted by Heather Buckley in Train the Trainer on February 16th, 2009 | No Comments »
Training or teaching someone is the ability to coherently and concisely define and explain a technique, theory or concept in such a way that whomever you are talking to fully understands. However, the trainer or teacher must be in a situation and at a level of efficiency high enough which allows them to be able to do this. The teacher or trainer must learn to recognise and utilise the tools available to them. Here is just a quick summary of some of the tools and attributes available to you as a trainer:
Your Voice/Tone.
This is one of the most powerful tools that a trainer or teacher posses, this dictates not only what is being said but also how you communicate with your class. With your voice you should be able to control and teach a class. If done correctly there should never be any reason for you to use any other form of action in order to be able to maintain order in a classroom. The tone of your voice is almost as important as what you are saying and will be a massive factor in how you are interpreted.
Humour.
It is important to realize that a in order to teach or train effectively there must be a good working environment, this means that everyone must feel at ease and not in anyway embarrassed or frightened to offer an opinion. A few jokes here and there are not only great ice breakers but also help to make people feel comfortable. What you must not do however is to make fun of someone and making them the butt of the joke. This will only make them feel bad and affect your ability to teach them.
Communication.
This is a vital part of any teaching or training program. You should make it clear that if anyone does not understand what you are saying or what is happening that they are welcome to ask for your assistance. Some find it harder than others and you should never take it for granted that everyone understands. What it is often a good idea to do is to ask the class whether or not they understand directly, so as to hopefully prompt a response if anyone does not.
Learn in greater detail the right attributes for training on our Train the Trainer course.
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Posted by Heather Buckley in Train the Trainer on April 17th, 2009 | No Comments »
Learn to understand the importance of Non-Verbal Communication on our Train the Trainer course.
When we talk we will almost undoubtedly be gesturing as we do so. This seems perfectly natural, and indeed it is, however the significance of these gestures is often vastly underestimated. Recent studies have shown that gestures can often reveal the subtle and unspoken emotions behind what a person is actually saying. From a training point of view proper untilisation of this fact can greatly help a trainer convey their message to their pupils, and help the students gain an easier understanding of that method or subject etc.
However there is also a downside, as improper or “mismatched” gestures will make the learning process difficult for the students, and they will be confused by any obscure or misleading gestures given to them by the teacher. This is perhaps more common than you would have thought as studies have shown that most teachers will use misleading or confusing hand gestures about 20% of the time when they are teaching.
Teachers on average will make some sort of non verbal communication, every ten to twelve seconds, and 50% of these will be gestures that illustrate a concept. So it is easy to see just how vital making proper use of these gestures can be to a teacher, and, on the reverse side, just how confusing and misleading it can be if used incorrectly. It is the recognition and utilisation of this fact that will really allow you to get through to your students.
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Posted by Heather Buckley in Train the Trainer on March 23rd, 2009 | No Comments »
