DigitalSimply - About our Workshops

Yes, the digital world is confusing, even for those of us who have been working with it for years. There is always more to know. But for those just launching into it, whether new to digital photography or experienced film photographers making the switch, it can be daunting to down-right scary.

But with just a few sessions in our "hands on" workshops, you will be up and working on your digital images be they family photos or art photography, assembling albums or website albums, restoring old family prints or just fixing the shots from Zanadu that somehow were underexposed or everyone's faces were in shadows.

You will work with your own computers using PhotoShop Elements or Pro (an inexpensive but very powerful photo management tool). We pick up after you have taken your photos or scanned them (although we also offer specialized workshops aimed at particular applications of digital photography that start with set up and lighting such as photography of objects of art, realestate, people, landscapes etc.)

We keep the workshops small so we can offer personalized instruction although we recommend working with a "lab" partner if you feel two heads are better than one. You will be expected to provide your own computer (Windows or Mac) and purchase your own copies of the software being used. We will provide samples of images to learn on that typify common problems.

Some of you will prefer the workshops that focus on helping you deal with photographs you have already taken using your digital camera or from scanned prints. These classes will help you fix problems inherent in the images at the time they were taken. But we will also show you how to avoid many of these problems when you take the photo in the first place.

We will help you learn ways to organize your images so you can catalogue them and find the quickly in the future. For some this may be using the computer's directory/folder system; for others it may be software designed just for this purpose. We will help you learn to crop, resize, change color, exposure, contrast, remove red-eye, bring out the detail lost in shadows and more. You will learn simple ways to make images for email and presentations as well as high quality for printing. We will help you learn to choose the right printer, the right papers and print storage. Learn to assemble images into digital albums, burn them to CD, make slide shows complete with music score. Plus much more.

BUT we will not teach you how to use your computer. Computer skills are a pre-requisite for these workshops. We will teach you, however, how to use the programs, master the tools, and gain control over your images.

We will also have workshops for specialized applications of these skills. For example, artists need to be able to photograph their work and make it look great for museum art galleries, exhibits, brochures and catalogues or even to make high quality prints on (continued page 3, click on page button below)

canvas or water color paper for sale. In a case like this, the workshop starts with the taking of the photograph.

The painting or three dimentional work must be photographed under the right lighting. We show you how to do this - simply. We show you the settings to use on your camera to get the best results. You can have far better finished results in the images you bring to your computer are the best possible.

Then we walk you through all the steps to make that image of your art work look as much like the original as possible. The requires adjusting color balance and intensity, exposure correction, correcting for square, sharpness, converting to 4 color from RGB, saving the files correctly for reproduction and/or ink jet printing and so on.

Real estate agents can often help speed the sale of a house if the photographs they show of it in the office look great. There are tricks to photographing architecture. Like art work, the best prints come from the most attractively designed photographs taken in the right light then polished in PhotoShop. This provides a definate ROI that affects the bottom line. The advertising industry has known this for decades but to achieve it is a learned skill set that we will teach you.

Give us a call (805-646-1991) or email us and we will talk to you about your skill set improvement needs and fit you to the right workshop for you. (back to beginning click on page 1, button below)

Who should Attend?