russell brown movies

Not many people would know who russell brown is or for that matter have their photo taken with him (score two for me). He is crazy and wacky and i would actually not reccommend taking a course from him or sitting through one of his lectures. I would however reccommend watching some of his quicktime movies on the techniques of photoshop.
http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?ID=131
His web site can also be found at
www.russellbrown.com
Go to the first site posted here and scroll down to the photoshop cs section. I would start with the camera raw movie. If you dont already shoot exclusively in raw mode you may reconsider.

photographers link

I have long admired the work of sean kernan and just wanted to share the link.
www.seankernan.com
This would be more related to photography or web design and not so much photoshop.

levels clipping preview

I am confidant that no friends of mine would ever use levels to adjust contrast or color, but seeing how this blog is spreading like wildfire (1 e-mail so far), someone out there just might. This is just a very small tip for using levels to let you see when clipping (blown out highlights, or blocked up shadows) starts to occur.
While moving either the shadow or highlight sliders, hold down on the alt key (win) or the option key (mac) and you will be able to preview the clipping. If you see red in areas that means that the red channel will have no information there. If you see white or black then all three channels (red, green, and blue) are blocked up.
I use this preview approach in the camera raw dialog box but did not know that it also worked on levels.
I tried it on curves as well but no luck.

burn and dodge

More about tool modes.
If you want to make a background white, use your dodge tool and set its mode to highlight. I usually set the strength quite low, around 18 should do the trick.
The tool will now only affect the highlight end of the scale and not the shadows.
It works well with eyes also. Run the dodge tool over the catchlights and lighter parts of the eyeball to give them some sparkle. If it makes the parts of the eye that are suppossed to be black too light just use the burn tool set to shadows to bring that part back to where it should be.

clone stamp modes

We of course have all used the clone stamp tool but have you changed the tools mode setting in the options bar. If retouching something dark like moles or bags under eyes try setting the mode to lighten. The stamp will clone out pixels that are darker than your target area. Use it on darken to get rid of shiny skin. Remember to make a duplicate layer of your background layer so you can play with the opacity of your cloned layer to make it look natural. Also remember to play with the opacity of the clone stamp tool itself in the options bar.

music link

My pal Darren has passed this awesome link along for getting some music off the net. www.pandora.com
You type in the song or artist that you like and it generates a streaming radio station for you with songs or artists that are similar to what you typed in.
This is a must try.

Class is in

Hi.
I made this blog about a year or two ago and have yet to add something to it.
I start teaching my new class in three days. All second year photo students and all probably between a beginner to intermediate level in photoshop. The school is excellent, very creative, and the class is generally pretty keen to learn. I am looking forward to monday and am also feeling that this will be my last year of teaching.
Yes, i am going to retire at the end of this class. I would consider doing some consulting with the third years but thats about it. Im getting old you see and have to start winding down.
Anyway, enough babble to get this thing started. I am going to start this blog as a photoshop resource thing. I will be posting links to cool things and jotting down some notes on how to do other things.
Stay tuned and check back anytime.
On with the show.