Welcome to Fall Semester 2011 Photoshop 2!
I'm very much looking forward to sharing my knowledge of Photoshop with you, and I can only hope you are just as excited to utilize and explore PS as a creative tool in the world of photography!
Before getting started, I wanted to point out that I like to begin each class with a quote that relates to that week's discussion material. I think it's a fun way to introduce the lecture and I hope you enjoy them. Below is our first quote, surprisingly enough not from a photographer but from Vincent Versace. I think it sums up my philosophy about Photoshop, and shares with you how I'll approach teaching the course!
"Photoshop is not a verb. It is a noun. It is the means to an end, not the end itself." - Vincent Versace
To have an understanding of Photoshop, you must first learn how the program "sees" your image. The most basic picture element of a digital photograph is a "pixel" and an image is made up of a lot of these. Photoshop simply manipulates the color, tone, and position of these pixels in order to achieve the photographer's desired results. But before you start retouching, I want you to understand how the colors and tones of each pixel are interpreted by Photoshop, and ultimately by you as a Photoshop user!
As in photography, it all starts with light and specifically the mixing of 3 primary colors together to achieve all the other colors we can possibly see.
The Additive Process involves mixing Red, Green, and Blue light together in varying proportions to produce any color. The RGB color method is used in today's digital camera sensors, television sets, and computer monitors, and was was used in early color film photography. Adding red, green, and blue light together in equal amounts will produce white light. Mixing just 2 of the additive primaries together will produce one of the subtractive primaries (see below).
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| RGB = Additive Primaries (CMY = Subtractive Primaries used in printing along with black or K) |
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| Equal amounts of RGB light mixed together = White light |
