Photoshop for the Artist
Taught by Samantha Lee Osner, and written around the techniques taught on Martin Osner's Getting Started in Art Photography. Almost every lesson is an extension of one idea: the camera is one of the instruments on the workbench, and in digital photography today Photoshop is another, and a vital one.
Short lessons, at your own pace, on a Mac or a PC.
Why this one
You can find a free video on layer masks in about four seconds. What you cannot find is somebody teaching you layer masks because you are about to lay a nitro transfer over the original, or hand paint a black and white print, or build a mirror montage.
This is that course. In order, taught by somebody who does this work every day, an established exhibiting artist, with every lesson a gem you can use immediately.
David Schlosser talks about exactly this in his interviewGetting Started in Art Photography is primarily a hand technique course, where craft is taught in order to make artwork. Martin does introduce Photoshop workflow along the way, because some techniques have to begin on a screen and some have to be finished there, and he shows where a technique made by hand could also be made in a similar way digitally. This course is the extension of that. Samantha takes those instructions, rolls them out, expands them and teaches them properly. If you are on the art photography course and your Photoshop feels jaded, this is the place.
Disclaimer
What this course is not
This is not a structured step by step manual on how to operate Photoshop. It is how to use Photoshop to reach a particular look and a particular feel. It does start right at the beginning though, with the difference between Bridge, Camera Raw and Photoshop, because that understanding has to be in place before any of the techniques make sense.
Start here, free
The single biggest stumbling block we see is not a tool, it is the software itself. What a raw file actually is and how it differs from a jpeg. What a data file is and what a pixel file is. Why that changes everything you do afterwards.
Martin has a film that explains it plainly, and it is free. The first lessons of this course cover the same ground properly, setting up and working with Bridge, Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop, because that is the Achilles heel for a great many of our own students.
Watch the film without giving us anything. The in depth transcript comes by email if you want to keep it.
The shape of it
It starts with where your files live and ends with the techniques that turn a photograph into a piece of art. Nothing is assumed.
Module one
Where the files live. How to categorise, tag and find a photograph months later without hunting through folders. Dull, and the reason everything after it stays calm.
Module two
Exposure, colour and the overall quality of the file, settled before it ever reaches Photoshop. Most of what people try to rescue in Photoshop should have been done here.
Module three
Selections, layers, masks and blending modes. The four things everything else is built on, taught in the order you will actually meet them.
Module four
The part nobody else teaches. Every lesson here exists because one of the art photography techniques needs it.
Every lesson
Short, single subject tutorials. You watch the one you need, when you need it, and you come back to it later when you have forgotten.
The part nobody else teaches
This is the difference between a Photoshop course and this Photoshop course. Each of these was built to serve a specific technique on a specific art photography course.
Who teaches it
Samantha Lee Osner is a fine art photographic artist in her own right, exhibiting and selling her work, and she is the one who does the digital side of the Academy's own work. She built this course because she watched too many capable photographers stall at the same wall.
Both of the people quoted below came to her frightened of Photoshop. Neither of them is now.
What her students say
Mark Daitz, before he started with Samantha. Both accounts are worth reading in full.
“Extremely talented, knowledgeable and experienced, is how I would describe Sam. With patience, she guides you through the various techniques towards your visual goal. If concepts elude you or are too complex, Sam works with you to develop an idea and find solutions to achieve your desired outcome. My time spent with her is always productive and she is always eager to assist, even if it means repeating a Photoshop step over and over.”
Lesley Spiegel
Vancouver, Canada
“I had learnt to take photographs to a certain level, some quite nice, but none processed. I realised I had to learn to process if I wanted to engage with this wonderful medium, however the idea of Photoshop scared me to the bone. Enter Samantha Osner. To say a teacher is too bland. Samantha has the knowledge and the patience, but most of all she is passionate about what she does, and that with an eye for the finished image makes her a truly great teacher. My Thursday afternoon lessons have become the highlight of my week.”
Mark Daitz
Cape Town, South Africa
Made with these techniques
Every one of these was made with a technique taught in this course, and the caption tells you which. Click any piece to see the full composition.
Afterwards
Every course you take sits in your own library, labelled properly, so when you come back in eight months having forgotten how a nitro transfer is prepared for print, you find that one lesson in a few seconds and watch it again.
That turns out to matter more than anything else about it. This is not only a place to learn Photoshop, it is the place you go back to. A reference shelf for the digital half of your practice.
Before you decide
This is for you if
You know you should be processing your own work and you have been avoiding it. You want to understand what you are doing rather than follow somebody else's recipe. You want the digital half of the art techniques to stop being the hard part.
This is not for you if
If you have a solid grasp of processing and development you will find the first half too basic, and we would rather say so now than take your money. More advanced and specialised courses are planned.
One exception worth naming. If you are a photographer who wants to move into an artistic space and intends to do it mainly through Photoshop, these techniques and the small hacks behind them will serve you well. You simply have to come at it with the right mindset, because the point is never the tool.
Joining
$490
One payment, and it stays yours
Three months of the Inspire Community
Included with the course. Somewhere to put a piece up while you are still working on it and get told honestly what is and is not working, which is exactly what you want while a new technique is still unfamiliar.
See what the Inspire Community isWhat you will need
The Photographer's package from Adobe Creative Cloud, which includes Photoshop, Adobe Camera Raw and Adobe Bridge. Nothing else, and no plug ins.
Adobe charge separately for that, and it is not included here.
Afterwards, if you want it
Some people finish the course and then want to take one of the techniques further than a lesson can go, on a piece of their own. Samantha takes a small number of private Photoshop lessons each week, online, one to one, working on your images and on where you want to take them.
Lesley and Mark, quoted further up this page, both worked with her this way.
$190 an hour
Email Samantha directlyWrite to samanthaosnerphotography@gmail.com and she will come back to you with times.
Our advice
Take the course first, and you may never need an hour at all
Most people do this course and never book a private lesson, which is exactly as it should be. A few find one small thing that will not come right and clear it up in an hour at the end.
More often than either, somebody comes back to Samantha later with a piece of their own, made with a technique from the course that they have taken to, and asks her to help them push it further and make it properly theirs. That is what an hour is best spent on.
Twenty two lessons, $490. An hour of her time, $190.
Before you ask
Anybody who finds Photoshop intimidating. It is built for people who need the basic, fundamental knowledge to develop and process their own images, and who want to understand what they are doing rather than follow a recipe.
Anybody already comfortable in Photoshop with a solid grasp of processing. We would rather say so now than take your money. More advanced and specialised courses are planned.
The Photographerā€™s package from Adobe Creative Cloud, which gives you Adobe Camera Raw, Photoshop and Adobe Bridge.
Other editors share some of the features, but the course is built around Adobe Bridge, Camera Raw and Photoshop, and following along in anything else will be hard work.
Either. The Adobe applications run on both and the lessons apply to both.
Adobeā€™s own minimum requirements are modest. For comfort rather than the bare minimum, a reasonably quick processor, plenty of memory and room on the drive.
Both. It starts at the beginning for anybody new to Photoshop, and carries on into techniques that will be new even to people who have used it for years.
Twenty two short lessons, taught by somebody who does this work every day, built around the techniques you are already learning by hand. Three more are being recorded now, and they arrive in your library at no extra cost.
Let me get started$490, one payment.
Get started today before this once in a lifetime opportunity expires.
