Photoshop CS4, Intermediate

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

All courses run for six weeks, with a two-week grace period at the end. Two lessons are released each week for the six-week duration of the course. You do not have to be present when lessons are released. You will have access to all lessons until the course ends. However, the interactive discussion area that accompanies each lesson will automatically close two weeks after the lesson is released. As such, we strongly recommend that you complete each lesson within two weeks of its release.

The final exam will be released on the same day as the last lesson. Once the final exam has been released, you will have two weeks to complete all of your course work, including the final exam.

Lesson 1
In this opening lesson, you'll find out what layers are and how to work with the Layers panel to create, view, or hide them. After you've learned how to do basic editing in Photoshop, the most critical skill you can learn is how to use layers because editing your image in layers opens a whole new world of opportunities for fine-tuning your images whenever you wish. Unlike single-layer images, a layered image can be edited nondestructively at any point, so you don't have to start over again if you've made a mistake or need to change something.

Lesson 2
Today we'll focus on understanding the clues Photoshop gives you that explain exactly what you're doing to a layer as you're working. Along the way, you'll see how you can use layers to make an area of a photo pop out from the photo itself. This is a technique called screening back an image, and it's a treatment that you're sure to enjoy using .

Lesson 3
In this lesson, you learn how to take advantage of Smart Objects—the most awesome and significant innovation in Photoshop since the layers feature was introduced. One of the most exciting things you can do with a Smart Object is place a RAW-format photo (or JPG or TIF) file inside the Smart Object so you can re-edit it in Camera RAW any time you want. You'll discover how to crop and resize photos nondestructively using Smart Objects, and you'll love the way Smart Objects let you make a protected package out of an image.

Lesson 4
Today you'll see how you can make an individual layer in an image larger or smaller, rotate it, or use the incredible Warp command. All of these changes can be reversed if you make them on a Smart Object layer—you can change your mind as often as you need and anytime you want. You can use filters nondestructively so long as you apply them to a Smart Object (gee, those Smart Objects come in handy!). You'll also learn to create a pear that, when cut open, reveals a new fruit—the pearange (a pear with an orange inside of it).

Lesson 5
If you use the Levels command to alter the values in an image and then decide a week later that you made the image too dark, you're stuck. Each time you edit the Levels in an image, you lose image quality. But what if there was a way to edit the Levels as much as want and not hurt the image quality at all? There is: the feature is called Adjustment Layers, and you'll discover it today. An adjustment layer makes no permanent change to the image, and you can stack them up as you wish. It's more nondestructive editing, but it's a technique that I guarantee you'll wish you'd learned earlier. You won't ever want to apply a regular Levels command to an image again.

Lesson 6
In this lesson, you'll find out about layer masks—another way that Photoshop lets you have your cake and eat it too. If you bring a picture of little Johnny onto a new background image, and you erase all the stuff that was in Johnny's original background, what happens if you later decide you just have to have that red ball you got rid of a week ago? You'd better hope you have the original image around somewhere, and then you're in for a lot more work again. However, if you use a layer mask, you'll keep every pixel that's in the original image and hide the parts of the original that you no longer wish to see. If you change your mind about what you need to see, it's as easy as painting over some black pixels in the layer mask with white paint. You can change your mind as often as you want.

Lesson 7
Today you'll get a chance to use what you've learned about masks in a real project. It's modeled after work that I did on a series of children's reading books. In the process, you'll also learn to use Photoshop's new Masks panel, which makes working with masks easy. You'll upgrade your use of masks to be able to paint areas of the mask to hide or show them and to alter the opacity (called the density in Photoshop-speak) of the mask. Finally, you'll composite three images together using layer masks.

Lesson 8
Did the dog eat grandmother's portrait? Or did time and water do that damage? No matter. Using layers makes it easier than ever before to restore some of your treasured family heritage. You'll get ample practice on that today plus links to other sites on the Web that specialize in image restorations. Again, the theme of this lesson is nondestructive editing—working in layers so that you can always change your mind about a correction without having to begin again.

Lesson 9
What happens if you want to place a person into a swimming pool or the ocean using Photoshop? Water is partially transparent, and to make the composite realistic, you need to be able to slowly transition from total opacity above the water line to total transparency below it. That's one of the skills you'll learn in this lesson as you work with grayscale and gradient masks.

Lesson 10
Photoshop has some special layers that let you create patterns, gradients, or solid colors and change them easily, any time you want. Today you'll see how easy it is to alter the look of a complex border or change composites. You'll also learn some excellent techniques to create seamless patterns, which is something that many students really enjoy.

Lesson 11
Have you ever wondered how to put images inside of type, like those old postcards for various cities? You'll find out today. It's called a clipping mask, and it's a digital version of spreading glitter onto a paper that has a design drawn in glue—the glitter only sticks to the glue. In this case, the new layers only stick to the base layer in the clipping mask. It's really easy, but it provides one of Photoshop's "wow" moments.

Lesson 12
Do you like the look of double-exposed images? Would you enjoy creating a seamless composite of your vacation images? Then this is your lesson! It's one of my favorites in the whole course. Up to now, you've masked images so that you can either see the image in the layer or not, or you've used a gradient or paint in the mask to get a grayscale transition. Now you'll use photos in the mask to get a hide-and-seek look to layer visibility. You'll also learn how to create an image that has a different photo in each color channel. Then you'll finish the course with a fun assignment that lets you put together everything you've learned.