Digital Workflow For Graphic Artists

This class is focused on Adobe Photoshop CS3. Photoshop is the industry standard for making and manipulating photographic artwork and is the core software for many designers and artists. – But Photoshop is only part the workflow to make printed art work and design, web graphics and fine art.

The Various Roles of Photoshop

Photoshop is a broad and complex application that servers many purposes to many people. The many professions who rely on it for particular aspects of its vast feature set. Here are some of the ways that photoshop is used.

• Digital Photographers
• Digital Illustrators and Artists
• Web Designers
• Film and Video Graphics
• Animators
• Prepress and Printing Production
• Architects and 3D Artists

General Computer Habits and Lab Etiquette

Working in a digital environment has it’s pitfalls. By developing good personal habits regarding your organization and method for working in this class, you will greatly reduce the risk of ruining, loosing, or erasing your work, and can work under much less stress. By consciously following these suggestions, you will get more sleep, take less aspirin, be a happier person. There are no excused or extended deadlines for lost or late work.

File Saving

Save your work, and save it often. Computers crash, the power goes out, and you will make mistakes that are easier to solve by reverting to a recently saved file.

Versioning Your Work

Do not save over your work. Save each progression of work as a numerically sequential file name. You will be exploring and experimenting during the class. Do not be afraid to try new techniques and features in software – save each incremental advance in a project as a new file. (e.g ‘filename01.psd’, ‘filename02.psd’ ... ) By practicing this, you have no need to worry about ruining your current work. If an experiment fails, all you need to do is ‘Revert’ to the most recently saved file or close your work and open a previous version, and no love – or time – is lost.

Backing Up Your Work

Back up your work on multiple drives, and do it often. Hard drives fail, other people accidentally delete files many people share these computers), and you will work on different computers in different locations. At minimum, save you work on the school server in the space alloted to you, and also on your personal hard drive you keep in your possession.

Introduction To Bridge

Bridge is a supplemental program provided by Adobe. It’s purpose is to provide an easy way to visually browse and inspect image files of any format before opening them in Photoshop. Like the name implies, the software serves a ‘bridge’ between the various Adobe programs in your workflow.

Bridge will be used in this class often to sort and browse files.

Watch: Bridge Video Tutorial

Introduction To Photoshop

Photoshop has a similar UI as many other Adobe programs. The layout is highly customizable. Don’t be confused if you sit down a particular computer, launch Photoshop and it looks different. there are many windows that can be shown or hidden and rearranged depending on the user’s preference.

In-Class:

Movie – 01_navigation.mov (12.54)