Monday, 28 January 2013

Digital Camera Class 4

Click click click....that's all I could hear as I glanced around the computer room at 19:54 this evening. It was the noise of a class full of students heavily engrossed in the task that I had set for tonight.

The task for tonight was to alter a set of images that I had provided and to correct various elements in them. Such as remove some over-head cables, or to remove a burnt car wreck from the beach.

I started the class with a simple demonstration of how the Clone Brush and Scratch Removal tools in Paint Shop Pro worked.

Paint Shop Pro from Corel, is one of two graphics packages installed on the school computers, the other is Adobe Photoshop.  Experience has taught us, despite its alleged reputation, every student that has come through the door of my class has left and said how much easier Paint Shop Pro is, and that's why we continue to use it. If I can show you fantastic ways to alter images, and get great results in an easier manner, why would you choose do to do something the hard way!?

There were 14 images in total, the reasoning behind that, was that there would be more than sufficient to keep even the brightest student in the group going until beyond 9pm, although I did say that if anyone did finish all 14 pictures to my satisfaction they could go home early!! 

I gave a set of simple instruction out in class, they were printed in black and white, if anyone would like a set in colour then you can click here to download the notes, and print them off on your own  printer.

Here are a selection of photographs of tonight's class busy editing their photographs!






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Next week we will be making some old fashioned looking photographs from modern images!

Saturday, 26 January 2013

eBay - Saturday Workshop

Thank you very much to all that came along to the eBay workshop today. All in all I think it was a rather successful session, and I hope that everyone enjoyed themselves.

As promised if you click the link below you will be able to download a copy of today's classes presentation. 

http://www.christopherjthomas.com/downloads/ebaypresentation.pdf

It is in PDF format so you may need Adobe Acrobat Reader installed. It's on many computers so you may be lucky. If not you can download that separately from http://www.adobe.com and choose Downloads.

Click the link below to open it, or if you want to download it to your computer's harddisk then right click it, and choose 'Save Target As'

If you are interested in Photography, you might like to look at the galleries on my site as well, by clicking here: http://www.christopherjthomas.com

Any comments about today's class, or questions arising from it, please feel free to email me.   All feedback is encouraged. If you also have any questions about any of the other classes that I teach, and would perhaps possibly be interested in joining a class, then please do get in touch.   My address is chrisjthomas@gmail.com
Regards

Chris


Monday, 21 January 2013

Digital Camera Class 3

A practical session this week, I wanted the class to bring their camera's into school with them, and I'd set them a photo shoot exercise.

The problem with doing a camera class in the evenings at this time of year, is that we are limited to the things we can take pictures of during the hours of 7 and 9pm at night! So considering that, tonight's practical photography session was based on the words 'Shape, Form and Texture'. The brief was to take at least 6 good photographs, and the students were to interpret the words in whatever manner they wanted.




I then gave them plenty of time to take their camera's and wander around the school, looking for difference sources to take images of. 

We finished off with a look at Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 on my Apple Mac laptop. Looking at how to use the Clone Stamp tool.


Adobe Photoshop Elements - used by many, but no where near as easy as Corel Paint Shop Pro.

Next week we will be using the computers for the first time. Paintshop Pro has been installed for us, and we will be seeing how easy it is to modify pictures and enhance them!

See you then!

Open for business!

The Barry Adult Education Centre will be open today and this evening for all classes!

Please be a little careful in the car park as there are still a few patches of snow and ice!


See you later on!

Chris