Hey, so you know what? I’m gonna do it. I’m working on a new class which is all about editing photos: Light & Colour. In a non-scary way, without techie talk. I’ve not had any professional training in photo editing, so if I can do it, you can do it too. What I do have, is more than a decade’s experience using photo editing software, both Photoshop and the Gimp. My photos have been used both in my own book, books by other people and in various magazines.
The photo at the top of this post is an example of one of the things I’ll show you in the class. Taking a fairly dark photo and lighten it but without it losing any of its brilliance or contrast. I’m not going to promise you that you can do that with all photos, but most photos can be improved a lot!
I use the Gimp when editing my own photos and that is what we’ll use in the class as well, but a lot of the skills would be transferable to Photoshop. If you have no experience with photo editing, we’re going to start with the basics of using the Gimp and with exercise build up some editing muscle!
Maybe you’re asking, what is the Gimp? What’s with the funny name? Gimp is short for: GNU Image Manipulation Program. It can do a lot of the same things as Photoshop, but doesn’t come with the hefty price tag. In fact, the Gimp is absolutely free!
You don’t need a fancy camera to take part in this class, a point and shoot camera is fine. Even a lot of smart phones take decent photos.
The class will have 3 modules.
• Gimp basics: I’ll show you to download and install the Gimp. And we’ll go through the main areas of the program, including, the workspace, tools, saving and exporting your images.
• Techniques & tips: This is the main part of the class and I’ll show you lots of ways to improve the photos you have taken. There will also be some fun tricks that you can use with your photos.
• Improving your photographing: I will share some tips for improving the photos you take, so you have a better raw material to work in editing.
The Light & Colour class is for you if this sounds like you:
– you want to improve the photos for your blog
– you want to add decorative elements to your photos
– want to learn how to add textures to images
– you want to learn about adding text to images
– you’ve opened a photo editing program once but closed it straight away because it seemed totally confusing
The class starts on April 7th and runs for 8 weeks. You can sign up now and until April 1st.
