I’m Learning Photoshop (Very Slowly)
I don’t have a very good grasp of technical things. I have a camera, and even though the whole aperture/f stop/shutter speed thing has been explained to me about 4000 times and it all makes perfect sense while it’s being explained it goes clear out of my head as soon as 3 minutes passes. It could appear to be willful, but I am also the same person who took algebra 3 years in a row and failed every year and then spent my senior year in remedial math learning how to move a decimal point. I got a C and I was thrilled. I’m not sure why but certain types of information just won’t stick, while other seemingly useless information rattles around in there forever.
I’m not much better with Photoshop (layer? what’s a layer?) but I am hoping that it has less to do with a techno block and more to do with lack of repetition in applying what I have learned. Today I took an image and split it in two to make a diptych. Granted, I had to refer to the notes Mr. Hastings thoughtfully wrote down for me (last March), but I still did it and I am pretty excited. I don’t know if I am finished working on this, but it’s finished enough for now. Maybe next I will re-learn the coloring lesson I got the other day, expect finished results sometime in 2011.
Acid Reign
November 18, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Good work! It looks great as a diptych.
Nice pun, too. Reminds me of that Chocolate Rain song.
I think with experience and repetition you’d learn photoshop fine. I think you learn better with viceral experience than by having abstract concepts thrown at you. So by just exploring what happens when you press certain buttons it’d you’d make sense of it your own way.
Descriptions of how to use various computer functions tend to be pretty obtuse anyways because they usually aren’t defined by any singular conceptual foundation. They are just hundred of features tossed into a complicated basket. This is why they don’t even bother to invest much in their manuals. They figure people will just start playing and when they have a specific question they can ask. The context that led to that specific question will make the answer make a lot more sense.
So yeah, just playing around is usually the best way to learn them.
November 18, 2009 at 2:26 pm
after i posted this i looked at it again and realized that the shape and patterns remind me a lit of that piece that you gave me. i should find a link to that. uh, be right back.
November 18, 2009 at 2:38 pm
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j9/killbunnie23/framedr.jpg
November 18, 2009 at 2:44 pm
PS. Play with it. Punny.
November 18, 2009 at 2:51 pm
haha, i was wondering what kind of response the title would get. i’m going to use it for more experiments to learn more about the medium, but this version is finished.
November 18, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Actually, I meant play with Photoshop, and you’ll pick up what you need to know. I like the diptych and at first I thought the bar, the space, was too wide. But not now.
November 18, 2009 at 8:59 pm
that’s a really fun image, bun. nice jorb, homestar!
November 19, 2009 at 4:07 pm
I’m a tech person and it took me 6 months but it’s worth it
Imagine taking a bunch of clear overhead viewgraph blanks and making a single picture by drawing some on each one and then stacking them
That’s beginning layers
Digitally you can make them more or less opaque and other cool stuff!
November 20, 2009 at 12:01 am
Good luck, Toni! I’ve been scared to take that step, but I can see it looming as an eventual necessity….
November 20, 2009 at 12:07 am
Oh, I almost forgot. All of the camera stuff will eventually hit you, and you won’t even have to think about it. I was terrified that I had made a huge mistake (and a bad, financial investment!) when I first started trying to learn all of the technical side of photography, but eventually, it just stopped being an issue and I started getting what I wanted out of the shots, in less fiddle time. We’ve all known for years that you have the compositional/expressive stuff down, and that’s 99% of photography anyway.
November 20, 2009 at 3:54 pm
i welcome the idea but it’s going on 10 years now and…well, i don’t know why but it just doesn’t seem to want to stick. for the most part i figure of i can keep the important bits in focus then it’s all good, but i can see why it would be more important if i were shooting film to have a better grasp because film = time+money so i can see why you took your investment seriously.
i’ve had photoshop for years but never really used it outside of basic contrast and color correction. generally my rule of thumb has always been if i couldn’t produce the results in a dark room then i wouldn’t do it in photoshop but now that i am exploring the program for non-photography projects i’m trying to brush up my skills a bit.