Secrets of the Photoshop Masters
Avondale Media http://www.avondalemedia.com/ US $49.95
Avondale Media's DVD, Secrets of the Photoshop Masters, brings together three of the industry's top Photoshop gurus- Katrin Eismann, Martin Evening, and Jeff Schewe to show Photoshop users at all levels how to utilize existing features more effectively and how to get up to speed on the new features now available in version 7. The DVD is divided into four sections. The first portion is narrated by Steve Broback, president of Avondale Media, and the rest by each of the three "Masters". It's easy to browse by topic or skip to a specific chapter by using the search feature, but I would have preferred a progress bar with a button that allowed you to drag it back to get an instant replay of a small section without having to view the whole chapter again. The picture quality wasn't the best on my computer screen, but the jacket notes claim that because of the nature of the video, the picture quality is better when viewed on a TV set and played on a standard DVD player. A large shortcoming I feel since most users would probably want to view it on their computers.
The first section, Mastering Photoshop's Interface, is narrated by Steve Broback and shows you how to streamline your work habits and improve productivity by using the navigation tools like the pros. These simple yet essential tips and techniques focus on mastering keyboard shortcuts and using pop-up context sensitive menus in order to work more efficiently and maximize your screen's real estate. Any Photoshop user can tell you how frustrating it is when the image you're working on is covered up by the tool bar and a pile of palettes. You can waste a lot of time shuffling those tools and palettes around just to get to the spot you need to work on. Well, shuffle no more. Steve shows you how to navigate your document, select tools, modify tool functions and toggle through layers, all without having to go back and forth between tool palettes and menu bars. He reveals how to find each tool's keyboard shortcut and its contextual pop-up menu and then demonstrates how effective it can be when utilized in a sample workflow. Integrating these tips means of course that you'll have to memorize a handful of keyboard shortcuts for selecting each tool and how to pull up and make selections from contextual menus, but it's well worth the effort. Once you've mastered these tips you can do away with many of those annoying palettes and increase your work speed significantly.
In the second section, Working Faster and Smarter, Katrin Eismann, instructor and author of several best-selling books on Photoshop, goes over several of the important but less flashy new features in version 7. Most of the features she demonstrates, Picture Package, Web Photo Gallery, Auto Color and Tile Images, are great time savers if you're a photographer or work with lots of images. The other features she covers are more basic, like the simple addition to the New Document window that gives you a pull down menu listing common preset sizes and image resolutions for print, web and DVD formats. And last but not least, she introduces the long overdue Spell Checker.
Martin Evening, a professional photographer, author of books on Photoshop for photographers and an alpha and beta tester for Adobe Photoshop, narrates the third section-Retouching And Refining Images. Martin shows how to use two of the flashiest new features of version 7, the Healing Brush and the Patch Tool. He also demonstrates some rather advanced methods of retouching images using blending modes, adjustment layers, masks and filters to refine the image even more. These complex techniques would be over the heads of most beginners, but could certainly be mastered by those users with a good foundation in Photoshop principles, a little determination and a good bit of practice. The subject matter covered in this section alone deserves, in my opinion, an entire DVD to cover it comprehensibly.
Digital Photography Workflow, the forth and final section, is narrated by Jeff Schewe, a digital imaging artist and photographer who also works with Adobe as an alpha and beta tester of Photoshop. Jeff's presentation focuses on the formidable task of how to manage a large collection of digital images in a way that allows you to save, organize, retouch, label and utilize them efficiently. This was, by far, my favourite section because it showed how to work with probably the most important new feature of version 7 - the File Browser. Jeff walks you through a project of transferring digital images from the camera to the desktop and then by using the File Browser he shows how to view, sort, rank, rotate, duplicate and file over a hundred images in a matter of a few minutes. After sorting his images, he demonstrates the power of using actions and batch operations to automate and simplify the process of preparing large volumes of digital captures. He uses the actions to quickly accomplish repetitive, tedious tasks such as sharpening, labelling, resizing and colour correcting that you would otherwise have to do manually to each image. This is for sure a huge time saving feature, but I would have liked to see him demonstrate how to actually create an action. Jeff then covers a few ways to enhance a digital image by using the Pinch Filter, correcting flaws with the Healing Brush, adding gradations to the background and adding a sense of motion with the Blur Filter. Finally, he wraps it all up by moving step by step through the process of previewing and printing an image as he reviews several of the more advanced settings you must configure in the print dialog box.