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Photoshop for Photographers: Starting Up, Getting Comfortable and Being Empowered

  • Stephen Johnson Photography (map)

Photographers & Photoshop Virtual Series

When: July 9, 2022

Where: Virtual from Stephen Johnson Studios & Gallery

Tuition: $90

A 3 hour virtual seminar.

Too many people are intimidated by Photoshop or don’t understand its amazing power. This seminar is designed to get you up and running in Photoshop, through set-up, basic functions important to photographers, and straightforward workflows. Having used Photoshop longer than anyone he knows (except Thomas and John Knoll), Stephen Johnson been down the evolutionary paths of the software. He has contributed to to Photoshop’s development and consulted with Adobe on features and is an excellent choice to help out photographers needing to benefit from its control and ability to finesse your photo edits.

History

As I've been using Photoshop since 1989 (as Barenyscan XP) and teaching it since 1991, the opportunity to make a real difference for you is clear to me. And I can make a difference in overcoming fear and help build Photoshop finesse.

This workshop is part of a series of classes concentrating on the tools within Photoshop critical to Photographers. It is a great chance to explore digital photographic editing with Steve. Demonstrations of his use of editing tools, executed with restraint and finesse, will benefit all of your digital photography work. This class is designed to break down the steps to really understand the processes, and to work through difficult images.

This three hour seminar will be spent exploring the tools really needed by photographers for fundamental image control and finishing. Color correction, careful tonal control, and preserving options into archive versions of your files will be our primary concerns. Software concentration is on Adobe Photoshop. A number of images with various challenges will be worked through to satisfaction during the course of the workshop. This seminar is not about compositing or faking photographs.

Topics Include

  • Set-up

  • Menus and Functions

  • Image Formats

  • Editing Strategies

  • Adjustment Layers

  • Curves and Tonal Editing

There is one scholarship spot in this class.


 Stephen Johnson

Steve at Pebble Beach. Photo by Fiona McDonnell.

Steve at Pebble Beach. Photo by Fiona McDonnell.

A photographer, educator and designer, Stephen has been teaching and working in photography since 1977. His books include At Mono Lake, the critically acclaimed The Great Central Valley: California's Heartland and Making a Digital Book. He runs his own photography, publishing and design company--scanning and designing his photographic books, pioneering the transition into digital photography including the field use of a Macintosh laptop and digital view cameras in the early 1990s. Stephen founded his Photography Workshop Program in 1978.

His work has included With a New Eye, his groundbreaking and historic all digital national parks project, the 2006 book Stephen Johnson On Digital Photography for O'Reilly, ongoing portfolio development and extensive lecturing. Current work features a concentration on the abstract and sensual qualities found in flora for his new project, Life Form.

Stephen's pioneering work in digital photography, desktop color and digital imaging has included software and product development for clients such as Apple, Adobe, Epson, Kodak, HP, Leaf, Ricoh and SuperMac. His work with Adobe includes the creation of the duotone curves shipped with their Photoshop software.

His photographic clients have included the Ansel Adams Publishing Trust, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the Friends of Photography. Johnson's photographs have been widely published and collected internationally.

In 1999, Folio Magazine declared the publication of Johnson's digital photographs in Life Magazine to be one of the Top 15 Critical Events in magazine publishing in the twentieth century. Stephen Johnson was named as a 2003 inductee into the Photoshop Hall of Fame, recognized for his achievements in Art. Canon named Steve as one of their Explorers of Light 2006-2021.

In 1997, Life Magazine described Stephen Johnson as an artist that "...applies science to nature and creates art." His images create "...an intimacy that brings subject and viewer close in ways conventional photographs cannot." 

The Photographer’s Gallery wrote in 1998: “Stephen Johnson's photography rides on the "bleeding edge" of photography's transition to a digital media. Schooled in the traditions of fine-art western landscape photography, Johnson has taken his understanding of traditional photographic processes and brought those skills to bear on the emerging technologies and aesthetics of digital photography. He has pushed technology companies to rise to the best of what imagemaking can be, and pushed his own vision of how we see and record light in the natural world. This has led him to conclude that the way we have traditionally captured images with silver-based photography has been a poor and distortive view of the real and rich world before our eyes. His photographs look almost "unphotographic" in their clarity and purity of color. He shows us a world we know, but rarely see on paper. His is a truly remarkable vision.”

Stephen Johnson Biography
Workshop Testimonials

Stephen has received numerous awards and grants for his photographic work, including an NEA for At Mono Lake, awards from the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association, the Commonwealth Club of California and the Golden Light Award for the Great Central Valley. The New York Times named the Valley book as one of the eight best photography books of 1993.

 

 Refunds and Cancellation (note changes)

This workshop is financially dependent on adequate class registration. Where minimum enrollment requirements are not met, the class will be canceled, and a full refund given. You will be notified at least one week in advance if a workshop is not going to take place. Student initiated cancellations received prior to one month before the workshop will receive credit for a future workshop of similar value, a 50% credit will be given for notice received at least 2 weeks immediately prior to the workshop (a full credit less a $50 overhead fee will be given if another student is able to fill the spot from a waiting list). No credit will be given if cancelled less than 2 weeks prior to the workshop. Credits need to be redeemed within one year.

We recommend that you purchase refundable airline tickets as we cannot guarantee adequate enrollment to conduct the workshop.