CreativeTechs Free Lightroom Course

If you’ve signed up for any of the free CreativeTechs courses that I mentioned here on my blog, you’ll understand that these are great courses.The expertise in the instructors is very sound. I’ve taken the Photoshop and InDesign courses.

They will be running a free Lightroom course for those of you who who are using or planning on using Adobe Lightroom for your post processing and digital asset management application. Lightroom is a great application, but the extension of the functionality is tremendous with 3rd party plug-ins and presets. I use Nikon Capture NX 2 in addition to Lightroom since I find that the conversion of RAW files is often more accurate in my taste for color.

Here’s the link to the free Lightroom course HERE.

CreativeTechs is not only offering a Lightroom course for FREE, but there are a pile of other courses in Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Digital Photography being offered coming in Sept.

Here’s their calendar. Sign up now. The Photoshop free course is a MEGA since it runs for 6 months.

They are just finishing up their Illustrator course but there’s 5 sessions left in their Flash course at this time. CreativeTechs live webinar format for their training is unlike static video tutorial viewing. The courses are free but they do offer downloads if you miss one or find it handy to review the sessions. Downloads are at a very modest course. Often, in the beginning of the sessions, they start at $50. for the entire series (often 10 sessions in a series). This also includes a pdf handout along with the video. You can subscribe to the podcast versions in iTunes too!

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Hands on Classes

For those of you who need to see things in person, there are many classses available. Calumet has an Events listing if you happen to live near one of their store locations.

Here

There’s about 10 brick and mortar locations in the U.S. Cambridge, MA, Phila. PA, New York, NY, Chicago, IL and a bunch in CA. Some are free 2 hour sessions or fee paid classes. I spotted a 2 hour one on Nikon speedlights at the San Diego CA location. A portable lighting seminar at the NYC location. Start inside and then go outside to shoot. RAW workflow, Lightroom, portrait techniques… many good choices for all.

B&H also offers classes at the brick and mortar store in NYC.

Here

The Big Apple has the cachet to draw some biggie names. Looks like Rick Sammon is conducting a High Dynamic Range session.

If you’re content to sit in front of your computer, B&H has a series of free videos to view. Everything from creating low key lighting, equipment demos to software demos. You can even learn how to fold up that stubborn reflector!

Video/podcasts here

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Capture NX2 free online lessons

In order to be fair, I’m going to post a link to Nikon’s Capture NX2 lessons since I already posted a link to some Lightroom tutorials. Sibling rivalry—must play fair. If your budget has burst with gear acquisition, choose CaptureNX2.2 with Photoshop or Lightroom with Photoshop. I know it’s a hard decision. I happen to own Photoshop already so I freely admit to being a software pig. I don’t use Photoshop Elements so I can’t reasonably say that might be a solution combination for you.

Nikon’s Capture NX2 lessons Here

If you’re in flux about how Capture NX2 stacks up to Lightroom, I can’t advocate one over the other because I use both and for different reasons in the tool sets and features. The learning curve is steeper with Capture NX2’s interface.

What I can say is that Capture NX2 is not enough for post processing of great complexity. There will be things that you can only do in Photoshop. Major cloning and other moves are best left up to Photoshop. If I plan to move a billboard in an image or make a hip thinner, I’m certainly not going to attempt that in NX2 or Lightroom. However, the color renditions for Nikon shooters are very true without much additional tweaking in conversions of RAW files. Lightroom color profiles don’t quite match up and you’d need to tweak and save as a preset. Nikon View NX that acts like a front end gallery, but it’s a separate application—unlike Lightroom where one application serves both purposes to edit and organize digital assets. If you’re not sure what’s the latest, here’s the

chart for latest Nikon software with accompanying download links

Capture NX2 did get bundled with a lot of Nikon’s camera body releases last year. Curious and confused? You can give it a spin for free. There’s a 60 day trial version.

There’s even a flickr Nikon Capture NX users group. if you’re on flickr.

If you’re not one to learn on your own, there are online classes taught by Jason Odell here

Now you have no excuse to not run out and buy/learn three applications no?

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Lightroom—free Reference Guide

I was shopping for a friend who wanted to buy Adobe Lightroom since his trial version had run out. I’m not married to my software and also use Capture NX2 as well as Photoshop CS4 for my post processing.

Peachpit Press has an online reference guide. It’s not a tutorial but a good explanation of functions/methodology.

Here

I was also prone to doing some housekeeping in my LR catalog. I changed a folder name in Nikon View NX and when I went back to LR, oops. I couldn’t use the same method. Maybe I should stick to LR for my digital asset management. I think it’s stronger. You should use LR functions within the application to rename and move your images and not in the Finder level (Mac) or you’ll end up with all those question marks when LR goes looking for the images and then you’re stuck with relocating to help LR find them, etc. I am in the process of keywording thousands of images on nine hard drives, but like my folders to contain date and short description of the shoot. I fumbled along when LR was coming out of beta so I have work to do.

Since many Mac users are not used to that “right click” on the mouse like PC users are (one button mouse double clicks are more common in the Mac realm) or maybe you’re using a digital tablet and stylus, it’s not readily apparent that you access some things via the contextual menu drop downs by holding down the Control key to get what you want.

My answer to folder mysteries was here.

I also found the deal on Lightroom software for $222.95 for my friend. It was advertised as a 3 day sale. It may be time delimited, I don’t know if it will be extended so look at the date of this post.

Here

All is well for what is a rainy day here.

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Pen Tool T shirts

If you’re an illustrator or use the pen tool in your work electronically, you can make a statement in a tee shirt. There are t-shirts on Cafe Press being offered by Creative Techs with the pen tool proudly displayed. Bold and graphic and well… they make me smile!

Here

These were a result from their free Photoshop webinars offered online (Love the Pen Tool in Photoshop coverage of the Pen Tool). They are winding down their free 10 week webinars on Photoshop. Here are the remaining four classes.

Apr 9: Using Brushes
Apr 16: Retouching
April 23: Color Correction pt1
April 29: Color Correction pt2

Looks like Color Correction is so big that it’s broken into two parts. I wouldn’t count on my camera to know what was right. Correcting color is a must if you’re offering your work for sale to clients. People have expectations of a professional product both in photography and design. What happens in software on the back end is just as important as gear and the other components of image making.

Sign up for the CreativeTechs free webinars

Here

If you missed the earlier ones, $50 buys you all the sessions with a pdf. The real deal.

There’s also a free webinar coming up in May on Adobe InDesign!

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Bonus—Free Color Management webinar is coming

I honestly am excited about the free Photoshop webinar 10 week class being offered by CreativeTechs. The next class is tomorrow. It runs 60 minutes but the Q&A 30 minute time following the webinar is actually productive too. Jason Hoppe (the trainer) is doing a good job. Make sure you sign up for Twitter if you don’t already have an account so you can join in the chatroom live during the course of the seminar. The audience is muted over the live broadcast.

CreativeTechs is pushing the goodies a little further. They have added a bonus class in Color Management, scheduled for April 1. Steve Laskevitch is the trainer. Color Management for the Adobe Creative Suite CS3 and CS4. Laskevitch is Adobe Certified.

Here

on their blog for details.

I’m tired of seeing all these orange images of people all over facebook. It torques up my white balance radar. But those are not the peeps that need to learn this aspect of the biz. If you’re a designer or photographer, you should have the baseline knowledge at your disposal before you decide to tweak the daylights out of those pixels. When your client asks you to match a color that s/he is viewing on their monitor, you should be able to explain. Ditto for the color proof that they spit out of their inkjet. Do you know why an image looks different in Photoshop than your page layout application and how to fix it? How about viewing it in your web browser vs. Photoshop? *^&%^%^0-= hello color profiles!  Devices and applications, oh my. Hmmm, I wonder why the Goe System (formerly Pantone) hasn’t shown up in my color palettes? Maybe all the designers decided not to spring for $349 for the new swatches.

Do I know how to color correct? Yes, I do but I’m still going to calibrate my monitor and show up. 🙂 If I take away only one or two tips for the growing number of devices and software that I have, it’s worth it. Time = $.

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Bogen Imaging free seminar on lighting

Free Webinar on small strobes and flashes with David Fisher and Will Crockett.

Fri, Mar 13, 2009 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EDT

http://www.bogenimaging.us/Jahia/site/bius/cache/off/lang/en_US/pid/19099

Looks like you even have a chance to get a free prize: The Metz 58 AF-1 Flash
if you register. See ya there!

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