Also
Also, this morning my boss shows me font style he wanted to recreate in photoshop (beveled, blue-to-white graduation, 1px grey outline). In the span of 30 seconds I had shown him two keyboard shortcuts and three commands he had never seen or heard of, and had talked him through making it himself. I’ll make him use layers, and maybe one day he’ll stop handing me flattened photoshop files to work with.
Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t teach Photoshop classes in the evenings, since I seem to be so good at it.
I remember visiting my high school and talking with the journalism/creative writing teacher, who asked me kindly to teach her student a little bit about photoshop. I spent 10 or 15 minutes with her, explaining the importance of selections, how to make them, and what you can do with them, and I left feeling like that was exactly what she needed to figure out the rest on her own.
Regarding PS, the next time I pick up a nice d-SLR camera, I’m hoping to do some experimentation with HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos. I’ve done a little already, but I’d really like to get my fingers into it. I’m of the opinion that cameras need to stop growing in megapixels and start increasing their dynamic range.
(Dynamic range is refers to the lattitude of saturation or luminosity captured in any one image. Take a picture in bright sunlight, and your shadows will be pitch black, without interior detail, or if you aim for that, the rest will be blown out and uselessly white. Unless you have a high dynamic range. I made a post about HDR photos a few months ago. This is an example of an HDR photo. )
I think you should teach a photoshop class, why not? It’s something you enjoy doing…and the extra $$$ would be nice.
I’m not the biggest fan of HDR, but I absolutely adore the tonal range it gives b/w images. That said, I haven’t seen much the fill light slider in CS3 ACR can’t do. Also, with that said, Photomatix seems better at handling HDR than PS.
And there’s no reason cameras in a few years won’t be capable of carrying an 11+ stop range and record a human eye-like dynamic range. I absolutely see that as the future of photography.