Photoshop can be a very powerful tool for enhancing and manipulating your photography, but often people shy away from it because it is such a complex tool. Shy away no more. We will begin offering a series of Photoshop classes that are very specific to the things YOU want to learn.

This week, you will learn:

1. How to actually use curves: it's the levels tool on steroids!

2. How to remove wrinkles and blemishes quickly;

3. How make things disappear (telephone posts, cars, insignificant others);

4. How to replace skies;

5. Nondestructive cropping

6. Simple masking techniques that will change the way you approach photography;

7. How to make quick selections; and

8. Why the content aware tool is your new best friend!

Requirements: Please bring version CS5 or CS6 with you. If you do not have CS5 or 6, you may download a 30-day trial version of the latest Photoshop program from the Adobe website. Please do not download until the DAY OF CLASS as the trial version is only good for 30 days and you may want to use it for subsequent classes. PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS will be fine for this class for about 90% or more of what we are doing.

Please bring 5-10 RAW images to work on in class.

Plug-ins are not necessary but Clifford will go over what plug-ins are useful, what can be done with them and how they save time.

About the Presenter:

Clifford Pickett is professional commercial photographer, event photographer and educator based in NYC. He first picked up a camera while spending a year traveling through Europe after having earned his MBA early. Like many travelers, that passion for seeing and experiencing the world is precisely what ignited the spark for photography. Clifford has spent all of his time since learning how to see and capture the world with the fresh eyes that traveling affords. He hasn't been shooting for 40 years, he hasn't been alive for 40 years. He hasn't been classically trained in the fine arts either. He is entirely self taught, through books, workshops, seminars, DVD's and real life, it is this that perhaps may be his greatest asset, the ability to relate to the amateur photographer. Not having been so far removed, it is this understanding that allows him to help his students see through the cloud of misinformation and confusion and marketing spins to find real answers to questions from those who share the same passion for the world, and need to capture and share it, that he does. Leveraging both the business and photographic skills he has developed while managing a private testing laboratory, he recently is the owner of a photography company specializing in the construction industry and a commercial video production company. His corporate clients include Estée Lauder, Sephora and Clinique.