Photoshop and InDesign seminar content brainstorm.

[Peter M. Gruhn]

Oh, guess I'm giving some lectures next week. One on Photoshop and one on InDesign.

 

Audience : Architecture, Landscape and Interior students. Undergrad and grad.

 

Class size : Who shows up? Say 20.

 

Length : Don't know yet. 1 or 2 hours each, I think.

 

Format : In a computer lab with lecture station. Combined two parts:

 

1) Whirlwind tour. "This is some of the kinds of things you can do,

tuck this information away in memory."

 

2) Hands on. "OK, let's all use these tools to see what doing this is like."

 

While I am perfectly happy coming up with my own curriculum, I'd like a bit of a brainstorm for ideas from other people. This is intended to be a class for everyone from clueless noobs to people who may have used the software once for a couple hours. I feel quite strongly that an hour of "cool tips" is not the right way to do this. (Ever see that video "101 Photoshop Secret Tricks In 101 Seconds" and like Secret Trick number 26 is "there's a brush tool"? Not like that.)

 

If you were an architecture student and somebody had an hour or two to get you started on Photoshop and InDesign, what would you find most valuable?

 

--------------------------

 

Without narrowing your potential for answers too much, the primary uses would be weekly studio presentation and portfolio preparation. As it's a working school, in office production work is likely. Professional Arch Viz is not yet a concern.

Edited February 26, 2010 by Peter M. Gruhn
more info

[jinsley]

1. setting up documents properly for print... colour space, resolution, how big does the document have to be...

 

2. layers management

 

3. navigating around the workspace

 

4. using some of the basic tools and how to mask.

 

If someone had shown that to me when I first started out, I wouldn't have resorted to using Powerpoint to put my portfolio together. I know... sad.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Also, go through steps of cutting out people and trees. What tools to use, how to use them, extract plug-in, etc..

 

16 bit, and the difference between 16bit and 8 bit. I can't tell you how often 16bit has saved my arse.

 

Non destructive color, curve and level correction.

 

Smart Objects.

 

And, how to ignore that there are tons of filters, and drop shadow options.

 

....Personally, I think they should skip InDesign, and stick with Illustrator. It would be infinitely more useful to them for what they will need to create. Assuming that they need to create vector base architectural illustrations, presentation layouts, and small scale portfolios.

 

InDesign starts to become useful when you get into more than 10 sheets or so, but still needs Illustrator if you want to do any heavy vector graphics.

Edited February 26, 2010 by Crazy Homeless Guy

[AJLynn]

I did an Indesign seminar in my (architecture) office a couple years back. My approach was "Indesign: It's Autocad for DTP" and I related everything to an Autocad function. Only time I've ever been able to get architects older than 35 to understand a word I say.

[alias_marks]

My 2c, technical neato tricks and workflows are great to learn... but can be a bit dry if that's what you start with *just trying to think about what classes really good me cookin when I was back in school. I'd show em possibly some video clips of, say, Dylan Cole, doing a matte painting to get them excited

 

Just thought I'd throw my hat in the ring among the other great suggestions.

Edited February 27, 2010 by alias_marks
friday afternoon grammar correction

[Peter M. Gruhn]

Good stuff, people, keep it coming, thank you.

 

FYI: Some other guy is doing the Illustrator show; we do two portfolio reviews, first review comes after 4 semesters of studio, I think my book was only kinda long at ~130 pages. InDesign is awesome for us.