Photoshop project

We turned in our Photoshop projects last week.

I was pretty proud of mine, and the people who'd seen it before I turned it in seemed to like it. Until the feedback section, when everybody seemed to have a criticism for it. That was a little depressing.

But then, when class ended, Rongfei explained how to make the changes everyone had been suggesting (especially masking the train's smoke so that the edges appeared semi-transparent and "smokey"). I really appreciated that, and I left feeling really good about the class, my project, and my fellow students (and, of course, our professor, Dr. Wang, who's doing a great job).

So thank you, everybody (and especially Rongfei).

Photoshop First Contact

This is the first time I've really used Photoshop CS3, though I'm quite familiar with its freeware and open-source competitors, Paint.net and G.I.M.P.

It was quite cool - very powerful and easy to use (despite the fact that it crashed on me once and took a long time to open). I can see why it's the "gold standard" of image-editing software.

First Thoughts

I've really enjoyed playing with Photoshop, and I'm really looking forward to learning Flash. It seems to me that Flash is a nearly perfect vehicle for creating easily portable educational products (learning games, presentations, etc).

My only "downer" so far is that the CS3 Deals site Dr. Wang mentioned in her syllabus seems to be "sold out" of CS3 products.